Unmukt Chand has to go down as one of the biggest missed opportunities of Indian cricket. Captain of the 2012 Under-19 World Cup-winning team, Chand was supposed to be the ‘next Virat Kohli’ of the Indian cricket team; however, his career spiralled even before it could take off.
Chand never played for India, a shocking trivia, nonetheless. Even more unbelievable is the fact that he announced his retirement at the age of 28, when the careers of batters begin to peak.
Chand, 32, has experienced more lows than highs during his cricket career. Despite representing the USA, he could not be part of the team that played last year’s T20 World Cup. Legends such as Kapil Dev were critical of his attitude when Chand infamously attended an event at the cost of being at the NCA training back in 2012. Getting dismissed to Brett Lee’s first ball of the IPL 2013 severely damaged his career, and even when he was trying his best to succeed with the Delhi team, internal ‘politics’ halted his rise. In 2019, Chand ended his association with the DDCA to move to Uttarakhand, claiming he saw his career going nowhere, being surrounded by an unhealthy environment.
“You can call it politics because they threw me out. It has never happened that you remove the captain of India A from your state team. I can’t put the blame on one person, but in a way, the selectors of DDCA are the ones taking such decisions. I felt bad that I served the Delhi team for such a long time and did reasonably well too, and then they made me the scapegoat,” Chand said while speaking on the Lallantop.
“In 2018, when I was still playing for Delhi, they only called me for the T20 knockouts, and I scored a fifty in the final. Then in one-dayers, I scored the most runs for Delhi. In a match where I scored a 100 against UP, I broke my jaw. But still, I wasn’t being given the Ranji Trophy. This went on for 2-3 years. As a player, when you keep getting dropped regularly, it really affects your confidence. It’s not a very healthy environment for any player. So, when it kept happening and I saw that being here is not doing me any good, I decided to switch to Uttarakhand.”
Things changed after Gautam Gambhir retired
Chand went further, explaining how things went haywire when Gautam Gambhir, the former India and Delhi batter, and current head coach of the Indian cricket team, announced his retirement from all forms of cricket in 2018. Chand reckons that’s when DDCA lost the plot and self-exploded, unable to recognise its own home-bred talents, let alone treat them well.
“Until 2017, when Gautam Gambhir remained Delhi captain, nothing went wrong in the team because he was a very strong leader. He fought for players and backed them. But when he retired, Delhi cricket went through plenty of upheaval. Nitish [Reddy] was dropped, Dhruv was doing well, and he was dropped too. And everyone knows what’s happening,” Chand pointed out.