When Nikhli Chaudhary got stuck in Australia during COVID-19, little did he or his family back home in Punjab know that the inconvenience would eventually result in him getting called up for the Aussie T20 side in just over six years time.
A former teammate of Shubman Gill, Abhishek Sharma and Harbhajan Singh in the state side, Nikhil travelled to Australia’s Townsville in March 2020 for a friend’s birthday, just before borders were closed. Now, the 30-year-old has a chance to become only the third India-born cricketer to have played for Australia, following in the footsteps of Rex Sellers and Lisa Sthalekar.
“When Nikhil decided to play club cricket in Australia months after he was struck there, I was a bit displeased. He had played for Punjab and wanted to don the Indian jersey one day. But he saw himself growing as a professional cricketer there,” his father Sneh Kumar Chaudhary told The Indian Express on Thursday. “Right from his childhood, he was an admirer of the dominance of Australian teams.”
The initial years
Nikhil’s cricketing dreams germinated in Ludhiana — a city his family shifted to in 1997, a year after he was born, to start a construction business. Chaudhary Sr, whose father was a wrestler, took a young Nikhil to train under coach Charanjit Bhangu at the Cricket Galaxy academy in 2007. Initially an off-spinner, the youngster later developed into a leg-spinning-allrounder.
“From the day he came to train under me, I was impressed by his physique. He had a very good cricketing IQ. Once during a Punjab U-16 tour to Madhya Pradesh where I was assistant coach, the coach decided to send him as an opener. He had never batted so high but hit a 96. However, he was dropped for the second match. When he returned to the side, he scored 145,” Bhangu tells The Indian Express.
Within five years, Nikhil would make his Punjab debut in a North Zone T20 match against Haryana, before he was handed his List A debut against Delhi in the Vijay Hazare Trophy in 2017. He was even named in Punjab’s Ranji Trophy squad but didn’t get a game.