I did not like the cleaning job, so I left it and came back to focus on cricket: Rinku Singh

Rinku Singh is the talk of the town for his out-of-the-world feat against Gujarat Titans recently. In an exclusive conversation on JioCinema's daily show #AAKASHVANI,  hosted by Aakash Chopra, Kolkata Knight Riders’ Rinku Singh spoke about his initial battles and how his family did not support his aspirations of being a cricketer. “At that time, I went to Kanpur to play for the first time in my hostel tournament, and my mother gave me ₹1000 and supported me, but my father used to beat me whenever I used to play,” Rinku admitted.

Singh said his father insisted that he focused on getting a job rather than playing cricket which after a point, his mother aligned to. “My brother used to work in a coaching center as a cleaner and he took me there for a job - I was given the job to clean early in the morning and leave so that nobody would get to know. But I didn’t like the job, so I left it and came back to focus on cricket,” Singh recalled.

Singh further elaborated on his first successful tournament as a cricketer. “We were playing against the Delhi Public School team and, I really batted well in that match scoring around 70 in a winning cause. So, the owner of the DPS, Swapnil Jain, asked me to join his team,” Singh said. In 2012, a global cricket competition of schools was organised with teams from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Dubai, and Bangladesh. Singh struck gold by winning the Player of the Tournament. “I won a bike from that competition, and my cricket career started looking promising and from that day onwards day my father stopped scolding me,” Singh remembered.

Singh also spoke about how much KKR buying him in the TATA IPL auctions aided him and his family. “It was very important for me because I didn’t expect that I will go for that much money. I thought that I will go to Mumbai for some 20-25 Lakhs, but that price kept on getting high and reached 80 Lakhs. So, my family was very happy and with that 80 Lakhs I got our house constructed, and then I bought a car for my father because he wanted a car for a long time. So, my father was happy, and my family was as well,” Singh concluded.