Sipu Jha
TimesofIndia.com in Colombo: The first memory Satya Krishnamurthi returns to is not of a net session, a trophy, or a highlight-reel clip. It is a day at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium, sitting in the stands with his young son, watching India play New Zealand in a Test match. The boy was barely eight, absorbing everything. The crowd, the whites, the rhythm of a long day’s cricket. And then the moment that stayed.Trent Boult troubled Sachin Tendulkar, and then it was his bowling partner Tim Southee who cleaned up the Master Blasters. Satya remembers the disappointment on the faces of fans and on his cricket-tragic son.
Years later, at Tendulkar’s home ground, the Wankhede Stadium, when Sanjay hit a couple of monstrous sixes off Hardik Pandya and Axar Patel, with the entire stadium applauding the 22-year-old and R Ashwin showering praise on social media, it made his father, watching from the stands, emotional.“We couldn’t even believe what we were seeing,” he told TimesofIndia.com. “It was way beyond what we had dreamt he would be doing.”Satya grew up like most Indian kids of his generation: playing a bit of cricket and watching a lot of it. However, never seriously enough to imagine a career. When Sanjay showed promise early, it was not mapped out with grand plans. It was encouragement, support, and letting the child enjoy the game. India’s 2011 World Cup win planted a seed in the youngster, and Satya and his wife Julie, an American citizen, moved to Bengaluru so that their son could pursue his dream.At Ebenezer International School in Bengaluru, Sanjay found a coach in Syed Zabiulla, who has also coached US cricketer Rushil Ugarkar and Karnataka’s current run machine R Samaran.As a schoolboy, and even when he played for Karnataka Under-16, Sanjay was not known as a six-hitter. His role was that of an anchor, someone who stayed at one end, accumulated runs, and gave the team stability.
USA cricketer Sanjay Krishnamurthi is pursuing a degree in Computer Science in San Francisco’s Bay Area. (Photo by Special Arrangement)
“He doesn’t speak much,” Zabiulla said about his ward. “He likes to live in the present.”Sanjay’s cricketing journey took an unexpected turn in March 2020, when the family moved from Bengaluru to San Francisco’s Bay Area, right in the middle of the pandemic. The shift was monumental. India, where cricket breathes in every lane, gave way to a country where the sport was still finding its feet.“In India, everything takes effort,” Satya explains. “The traffic, the travel, the competition. In the US, some things are easier. Infrastructure in terms of movement is better, but from a cricketing perspective, facilities are fewer.”Yet cricket was quietly growing. In the Bay Area, Satya began noticing parents dropping their children at academies in the evenings and on weekends. Matches were being organised. The ecosystem was small but expanding. It was enough for Sanjay to keep playing, adapting, and learning.What helped was Sanjay’s temperament. According to his childhood coach in Bengaluru, he was never a loud presence. Then came the move to the US, and with it, a harsh cricketing reality. There was no red-ball cricket. No multi-day games. White-ball cricket ruled everything.
File photo of Sanjay Krishnamurthi (top-right). (Photo by Special Arrangement)
“Sanjay understood something very early,” Zabiulla recalls. “If you want to play here, you have to change.”The quality of cricket in India, Sanjay later told his coach, was higher. But in the US, the single-format focus made planning simpler. It also demanded reinvention. Strength was lacking. Boundary-hitting was essential. So Sanjay worked on it.The transformation was not overnight, but it was deliberate. The anchor learned how to finish. The boy who struggled to clear the ropes became someone who could change games with a few swings.Through it all, academics never disappeared from the picture. Sanjay is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and is in his final year. Balancing coursework with international travel is not easy. He still has four courses left to complete his degree.“He’s very good at studies. He’s pursuing a bachelor’s degree in computer science right now and is in his final year. That’s something you can do in the US, which is very difficult in India. But he is finding it tough to manage both. He has four courses left to finish his degree,” Satya says.“Some professors are very supportive when he’s travelling, and there are online options as well, so he’s able to manage. Now that he’s playing in the World Cup, people are praising him.”Playing in the big leaguesThat balance is something Satya believes would have been far harder in India. In the US, flexibility exists, even if the demands are heavy. When Sanjay began playing in the T20 leagues, first in the US and then abroad, the attention followed.For the past two years, he has featured in Major League Cricket (MLC). This year, he also played in the Nepal Premier League and the ILT20. The dressing rooms changed. The standards rose. He trained and competed alongside some of the best in the world.Yet one thing was missing. He had not played against India’s best.When that moment finally arrived at the Wankhede Stadium, the emotions hit home. For Sanjay, it was another challenge. For his parents, it was overwhelming.“Just after the match, so many people messaged me,” Satya says. “Hundreds of messages for me, my wife, and him. It took time to respond.”Celebrity was never part of the plan. It arrived quietly, then all at once. Satya admits he did not expect it to be this big, even after years of understanding sports culture.Sanjay showed early promise
Sanjay Krishnamurthi played for the Karnataka U-16 team before moving to the USA in 2020. (Photo by Special Arrangement)
Zabiulla, watching from afar, was not surprised by the composure Sanjay showed. He had seen it before, back when his teams were underdogs.He recalls a two-day school match against one of the strongest teams in the city, DPS South. The opposition had ten state-level players. Zabiulla’s team had one.“As a coach, I was tense,” he says. “It was a small ground. They could have scored 300 or 400.”Instead, careful planning and discipline turned the match. The opposition were bowled out for 140. Sanjay played his part with the ball, delivering a tight spell of left-arm spin, and then providing a solid start with the bat.When the top order collapsed and the team slipped to 80 for 5, it was the energy, belief, and collective effort that carried them through. The tail wagged. They qualified for the final. There was a party at Sanjay’s house that night. Not because they had unearthed a future international star, but because a group of underdogs had trusted a plan and each other.That mindset stayed with Sanjay as he grew. He analysed everything around him. He listened more than he spoke. He learned when to adapt and when to stay true to himself.Sanjay ‘looked up to’ AB de Villiers
USA’s Sanjay Krishnamurthi plays a shot during the T20 World Cup cricket match between India and USA at the Wankhede Stadium, in Mumbai. (PTI)
Even idols were chosen with thought. Sanjay grew up admiring AB de Villiers, not because he wanted to copy him, but because he appreciated genius.“The cricketer he really looks up to is AB de Villiers. He has always admired him. In a recent interview, he said he doesn’t think his game is like AB de Villiers because AB is a genius who can’t be replicated. But he has always looked up to him,” says Satya, who has his own preferences. Asked to choose between Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid, he laughed before picking Dravid. Again, not because of numbers, but personality.Perhaps that explains something about Sanjay too.For Satya, it is always about the next game, not the past applause. For Zabiulla, it is about a boy who understood the demands of his environment and changed accordingly.And for Sanjay, it is still about living in the present, one ball at a time, carrying the image of MS Dhoni hitting the winning six for India, a shot that not only gave a billion Indians joy, but also gave a young boy hope.
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