Originally Published in the November 26th Print Publication
Cricket. A sport of patience, mental and physical endurance, fitness, mindset, and teamwork. As students from North Creek High School start to navigate their way through the world of cricket, it’s important to acknowledge their hard work and dedication to the sport.
This past season was an extremely successful season for NCHS seniors, Abhiram Purohit and Jinay Doshi. Purohit hit fifty runs during an NWCL (North West Cricket league) game. Purohit believes his performance is a reflection of his commitment to the sport. “It was a great feeling to score my first fifty,” Purohit said. “It’s a milestone I’ve been working towards for a long time.” He has been playing for around three years and has played from various academies and teams, showing his level of experience in the sport.
Doshi, a rising star, has achieved a huge accomplishment by representing the United States U19 national west team. “It was just an unreal moment,” Doshi said. Doshi believes selection is a huge achievement that reflects his level of talent and expertise. This was the first year that Doshi got the opportunity to represent himself on such a huge platform and he definitely did not take it for granted.
Doshi was informed about his selection into the team, and started putting in more effort into his game. “Ever since I got in, ever since I found out, I’ve been putting in more hours, more practice time,” Doshi said, “it was like a really big thing for me, but the happiness, or the satisfaction lasted for only about two minutes, and then I realized, that there’s more mountains to climb and more achievements to get, so we’ve just gonna keep working towards that.”
Doshi did not disappoint at nationals, especially as a debutant. He got 4 wickets in his last game against the second East team. Doshi wants to keep pursuing cricket and make it even bigger next year.
While players like Purohit and Doshi are well seasoned senior players, North Creek is also full of young talents like Shubh Parihar, Shillan Khan, and Adit Agrawal, a group of freshmen students.
Shillan Khan, an extremely dedicated and focused player, has displayed very impressive improvement in her batting and fielding skills in the past year. “ I’ve scored some good runs, and I just overall feel more confident in my batting.” Khan’s goals are very clear and she is determined to make it big. Her ambition to represent the US national team to potentially compete in the Olympics is what drives her to keep working hard each day to improve her game.
Khan’s cricket journey began with the encouragement of her father, and although she was initially hesitant, she has gradually started to fall more and more in love with the game. As women’s cricket is growing in the United States, Khan is optimistic about the future of women’s cricket.
Agrawal and Parihar’s journey in cricket, similar to Khan, started by the influence of their dads. Agrawal started actually enjoying the sport because it allowed him to become team-oriented and collaborate with teammates. Parihar started to enjoy the sport more because of the thrill and enjoyment he got from playing.
Agrawal played U15 Hub for USA Cricket in Seattle this past season and it was a valuable experience for him. He made it through two of the three rounds. Although he wasn’t able to make it through for the final round, he learned a lot from his competition. He wants to continue to work harder and gain as much more experience and improvement as possible.“ Definitely, there’s better players out there, but that just signifies that I need to work harder. I feel practice makes perfect,” Agrawal said.
On the other hand, Parihar, has represented the USA U13 Seattle team last year, and was also a part of the selection process for the U15 Seattle team this year. Like Agrawal stated previously, the competition was extremely tough and Parihar was unable to make a spot for himself in the team this year. He wants to work hard this winter season, and successfully make not only the Seattle U15 team next year, but also the National West U15 squad.
Cricket’s popularity around the United States and at NCHS is growing exponentially. “It’s inspiring to see how much cricket has grown in our community,” said Abhiram Purohit.
