Patiala lad picked for U-19 Cricket World Cup

Anmolpreet Singh with Rahul Dravid. (Source: Express photo)

Tuesday marked a high for 17-year-old cricketer Anmolpreet Singh. The lad, who hails from Patiala, has been named in the 15-member Indian U-19 cricket team for the ICC U-19 Cricket World Cup to be played in Bangladesh in January next year.

With father Satvinder Singh being a former captain of the Indian handball team, Anmolpreet, who is a top-order batsman, started cricket on the insistence of his cousins, who later shifted to Canada. While Singh’s younger brother Tegpreet is a leg-spinner, Satvinder Singh’s brother Surjit Singh’s son Prabhsimran is a wicket-keeper batsman and plays for Punjab at the U-16 level.

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“It’s the biggest news for the family. I wanted him to be a sportsperson and he picked up the bat seeing my sister’s sons play cricket. He made it to the Punjab U-16 side when he was 12 years old and earlier this year he played for Punjab in North Zone T-20 and became the youngest player to do so. And we know he will do well in the World Cup too,” said Satvinder Singh, who played for India from 1988 to 2000.

Anmolpreet started playing cricket in 2006 and soon made headlines with his performances at the district level. The youngster, who played for clubs like DMW and BECC in his initial years, then smashed more than 1,000 runs for Punjab in the U-19 Cooch Behar trophy in 2013-2014 season before hitting 1,154 runs in the same tournament in the 2014-2015 season.

Last year, too, he hit a triple hundred in the Cooch Behar Trophy and Punjab U-23 coach Sunil Saggi rated the knock as his best. “I saw him for the first time when he played in the Punjab U-16 side. And he has not seen behind. He is hungry for runs and 1,000 runs in two consecutive seasons speak a lot about his talent,” said Saggi.

In November, Anmolpreet played for the Indian U-19 side in the Tri-series in Kolkata. The youngster also played his role in the Tri-series title win in Sri Lanka, which the Indian team won Monday. Anmolpreet hit a crucial knock of 60 runs against England in the Tri-series apart from taking some important catches.

“The U-19 series also gave him a chance to spend some time with coach Rahul Dravid and it will help him a lot. He is a consistent scorer and the last two series saw him playing at different spots as the team wanted to try new combinations. The conditions in Bangladesh will suit his game,” said Patiala-based coach Munish Bali, who was assistant coach for the Indian U-19 team which won the World Cup in 2008 in Malaysia.

Anmolpreet’s mother Harjeet Kaur said, “We will be cheering for Anmolpreet during the World Cup.”