Jason Sangha, of Indian origin, the new face of Australian U-19 cricket

Generally, Sylvia Sangha would be in attendance to watch her son play in person. She has, after all, accompanied Jason to all his matches since the time he picked up a bat. Sylvia, though, had booked her flight back to Sydney and was actually live-streaming his innings when the plane took off, with Jason batting on 94.

Former Australia captain Steve Waugh was among the first to inform Sylvia about her son’s history-making feat when she landed after three hours. The Waughs and the Sanghas are no strangers.

One of the players Jason will be captaining during the World Cup is Austin Waugh, Steve’s oldest son. And the two families have grown closer ever since their boys started playing together for the junior teams in 2013.

Sangha has been part of Australia’s under-19 team since he was 16 and would have played the previous edition of the World Cup too, if not for his country’s decision to withdraw from the event in Bangladesh citing security threats. And he isn’t surprised to have been handed the reins this time around.

“The captaincy is an amazing opportunity for myself and I’m privileged to be able to not only represent my country, but to lead my country with pride. It wasn’t too much of a surprise since I captained a few games earlier in the year against Sri Lanka,” Jason tells The Indian Express.

Jason’s rise has been nothing short of meteoric. It happened in the space of six months last season. He led the New South Wales team that won the national under-15 school sports’ tournament in Darwin. That earned him a place in the Cricket Australia XI to play the under-17 national championship and before long, he was in the U-19 ranks. In April this year, he also became the youngest cricketer to be awarded a NSW senior contract. The century against Joe Root & Co. apart, it’s been a prolific season for the teenager. He’s already scored a total of 559 runs in the U-17 and U-19 championships.

The Sanghas, who resided in Sydney, would send Jason to Wallsend Cricket Club before the youngster joined Randwick Junior Cricket Club. Then two years ago, he started playing for Randwick Petersham Cricket Club, which has produced the likes of David Warner, Simon Katich and Usman Khawaja. And he promptly smashed two centuries for them in the NSW Premier Cup this year. It’s during these club matches that Sylvia and husband Kuldip Sangha would interact with the older Waugh twin.

“Austin Waugh plays for Sutherland Cricket Club and we would often meet him (Steve) during representative cricket matches. Sometimes, we would have dinner together and he’s always appreciated Jason’s game. And he congratulated us after his century against England. Jason even has some caps signed by Steve Waugh and he treasures them,” adds Kuldip, whose native village is Lodhipur near Nawanshahar in Punjab.

Waugh, of course, isn’t the first former Australia captain to rave about young Sangha’s batting talent. It was Greg Chappell who spotted Sangha before anyone else while overseeing a school tournament in his role as Cricket Australia talent manager. Chappell saw a lot of Rahul Dravid in Jason’s batting. “Jason is a very talented cricketer. He is an elegant stroke-maker with a touch of class that is the hallmark of the very best players. I look forward to watching his game develop over the next few years,” Chappell had said in 2015.

Dravid will be in New Zealand this time around as the Indian team’s head coach. And that’s added motivation for Sylvia to make it there, having missed out on her dream of meeting her favourite cricketer two years ago in Bangladesh. Jason is well aware of his mother’s Dravid fixation and is looking forward to meeting one of India’s batting legends. “Every cricketer would love to meet such an amazing player like Dravid. He’s someone I have watched for so many years and love the way he plays. If I get the chance to sit with him, I would absolutely take that chance,” he says.

In addition to enhancing his cricketing credentials, Jason has also had to study for his Year 12 examinations.

“He has had to mix up between studies, travelling and studying. It was certainly not easy. There was a time when he came from Brisbane and had to write his exams the next day. But I’m really happy that he will be leading the Australian under-19 side. The way he has been playing has taken a lot of toll but at the same time he has excelled in every format he has played in,” says Sylvia.

Sylvia, whose grandfather Ram Singh sailed to Australia in the early 1920s for farming, is a fourth-generation Indian while Kuldip left behind a promising athletics career in Punjab to start a restaurant in Cogee before one in Newcastle, some 200 km north of Sydney.

“It is always rewarding to watch my son play. We understand all the hard work put in by Jason and when we travel, we not only support Jason but the whole team. We live in Newcastle and Jason trains at Cricket NSW in Sydney, which is a two-hour drive from our home, but we still do that two or three times every week,” shares Sylvia.

And Kuldip isn’t restricting his wish list to meeting just one Indian cricketer. He wants to host the whole lot of them, if possible. “Maybe one day, if Jason makes it to the Australian cricket team and plays against India, we can host the Indian cricket team for dinner at our restaurant,” he adds.

Param Uppal, another player of Indian origin in the squad

All-rounder Param Uppal took to cricket after his father Devinder Singh Uppal made him watch footage of Sachin Tendulkar batting, on YouTube as well as television. The younger Uppal, whose mother Jaspreet, is a teacher at Muirfield High School, would join Kellyville Ridge Cricket Club in Sydney and then move to Norwest Cricket Club.

The youngster captained the Australia U-16 team in Sri Lanka in 2014 before captaining the NSW Combined teams in England a year later. “We shifted to Australia in 2003 and I would often talk about cricket with my friends here. We would discuss matches and would watch matches together at home. Param would sit with us and watch Sachin Tendulkar. Perhaps that’s why he also picked up bowling spin, watching the legend bowl his assortment of off-breaks and leggies. In 2015, when he captained the NSW Combined Team to England, he met Steve Smith in Cardiff during the Ashes Test and often seeks tips from him where they train together for NSW,” says the 47-year-old senior Uppal, who hails from Mohali and works in the Railways Transport department in Sydney.

Param was named player of the series, along with Jack Edwards, in the Australia U-19 series against Sri Lanka U-19 in Hobart in April. And on Friday, he bagged the man of the tournament award in the Australian U-19 National Championships in Hobart with 370 runs at an average of 62 and 10 wickets while captaining NSW Metro to the title triumph.