'I was not my best self for some time' - Unmukt Chand recalls gut-wrenching times after T20 World Cup 2024 snub

India's Under-19 World Cup-winning captain Unmukt Chand was left out of the USA's squad for the recently concluded T20 World Cup 2024. The right-handed batter recently revealed how the snub affected him.

Chand moved to the USA in 2021 after retiring from Indian Cricket. This tough decision was taken by the elegant batter after he couldn't make his way into the senior Indian Team despite playing for various franchises in the Indian Premier League. By shifting to the USA, Chand wanted to realise his dream of playing international cricket and he became eligible to represent them in March. However, he wasn't named in the 15-man squad for the T20 World Cup, which was co-hosted by the USA and the West Indies.

Chand's teammates, Harmeet Singh and Milind Kumar got the nod but he had to sit on the sidelines and watch Aaron Jones and Co. putting on a gutsy show at the showpiece event. The 31-year-old had performed well in T20 leagues and Minor League Cricket (MiLC) but that wasn't enough to impress the selectors.

"That wasn't an ideal situation to be in. Because personally for me, this was what I had dreamed for the last three years. Obviously, it was a big shock. And it took me time to sort of come to terms with it," Chand was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz.

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"It's never easy as a player, having lost all those things back home in India, to have this one goal, which had kept me going for the last three years not happening. So it is difficult. I won't say which just happened. But it was difficult. I was not my best self for some time," he continued.

It keeps sucking you inside and inside: Chand

Furthermore, Unmukt Chand admitted that it was very tough for him to deal with the exclusion. During the World Cup, he trained under his childhood coach in Maharashtra and returned to the USA recently to join Los Angeles Knight Riders for the second season of Major League Cricket (MLC).

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"That was a very internal battle and it's a sucker basically. It keeps sucking you inside and inside. That feeling would linger on for a day and then go away and then come back again. The reality would hit me in different phases. Once you keep going through that automatically you keep getting better. There comes a time when you're like it didn't happen, that's it. I'm not even thinking about it," Chand added.

The Delhi-born scored a match-winning 68 off 45 balls in LAKR's first game against Texas Super Kings but was dismissed for a five-ball duck in the following encounter versus San Francisco Unicorns.