From running on desert sand to sprinting on cricket field

Raj Limbani's primary dream was to become a name among others in the world of tennis-ball cricket. He eventually graduated to playing with cork balls after deciding to embrace his future. Cricket it was.

Bengaluru: While there is physical evidence of Digvijay Singh Rathwa's body of work in what Under-19 World Cup paceman Raj Limbani has achieved, the young coach’s ability to understand a subtle pain point and solve it on the fly becomes evident in a conversation with him. 

“You know, we can converse in English (rather than Hindi), you don’t have to try so hard…,” he said barely a minute into discussing his illustrious ward.

The latter half of that settlement, it turns out, is what he had been announcing - even over rusted Public Announcement systems - to Raj since he was around 14-years-old. ’Don’t force it!’

It would take a few weeks for Digvijay to understand what made Raj push as hard as he did, but until then, he was a small-time coach in Baroda somewhat empathising with a lanky boy, who wanted to run as hard as he could, bowl as fast as he could, and hurt as many batters as he could. Having grown up on a steady diet of Dale Steyn, one tends to pick up these things!

“He could bowl for hours, for days, because he had been running in the sand throughout his childhood,” Digvijay told DH. “He had an amazing motor from the time I got to coaching him. That could be from training all those hours in the sand.”

Even as Digvijay’s nasal voice trails off, the word ‘sand’ sticks out. 

Limbani is from Dayapar, which happens to be a village in the Rann of Kutch, which - for clarification - is a salt marsh in the middle of the Thar desert, which - for clarification - is one of the largest deserts in the world. 

So, when sand happens to be your typical underfoot setting, meaning turf wickets are not exactly plausible; and the Pakistan border is about half an hour away from Limbani's place so there’s that palpable tension.  

Vasant Raj, Limbani’s farmer father had a couple of options on his mind for his son given the circumstances: study like the siblings or take up farming. Family name (Limbani) be damned, Raj said he wanted to play cricket. 

“Yeah, we allowed him to move to Baroda for cricket in 2017,” said Vasant. “See, I’m a farmer and I have lived a very good life. I don’t need more because farming became my passion, but Raj had another passion, and he had it for a very long time.”

Limbani's primary dream was to become a name among others in the world of tennis-ball cricket. He eventually graduated to playing with cork balls after deciding to embrace his future. Cricket it was. 

He wrote this down in his ‘little red book’. “Everything he has written in that diary has come true, the only thing left is the National team,” said Digvijay. “I know he will get there.” 

What it takes for a dream of this magnitude to come true is Vasant moving to Baroda for good, leaving his brother to take care of the farm. The elder kids dove into academics, and Limbani was serious about cricket so he was enrolled at the Moti Bagh Cricket Club, four kilometres from the quarters they lived in. 

That club happened to have produced the Pathan brothers (Yusuf and Irfan), the Pandya brothers (Krunal and Hardik) and Deepak Hooda. Limbani was at the right place finally.

Some of his extended family was already in Baroda so that did make the migration a bit easier, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. 

“He took time to get adjusted to Baroda and its people,” says Vasant. “But, the boy is so single-minded and thoughtful, that he would have figured it out even if no one was there.” 

He figured it out much the same during age-group cricket. There were a dime a dozen talented pacers with the Under-19 team, including Dhanush Gowda and Aradhaya Shukla, but his spell of 7 for 13 against Nepal in the Asia Cup set him up. 

Since being in the side, not a match has gone by without Raj taking a wicket, he has eight in all so far.  

Irfan Pathan, it is said, was lofty in praise of the youngster… so the stars have aligned and Raj is perfectly poised for greater things. No one knows if he will do it or not, but it’s a fun idea to toy with, subjectively speaking.