Thought of playing for India never crossed my mind: Ish Sodhi

Inderbir Singh Sodhi was born in Ludhiana, Punjab in 1992. When he was four years old, he moved to New Zealand with his parent. The young Punjabi boy later went on to play international cricket for the blackcaps. Many people might not be aware of this but the person we are talking about is actually the leg-spinner Ish Sodhi.

As the entire world is going through a lockdown, there is no cricket going on. In these times, the team of CricTracker decided to catch up with the Kiwi spinner of Indian origin via an Instagram live session. During the interaction, our host posed several questions raised by our team and several fans on social media. The leggie as one would have expected answered each one of them gracefully.

Ish Sodhi reveals his childhood heroes

One of the questions which were asked to Sodhi was whether he ever thought about representing India at the highest level. The 27-year-old told us that thought never crossed his mind as he has always played cricket in New Zealand.

“I never thought of representing India because I always played in New Zealand, it really never crossed my mind,” the Kiwi leggie said.

However, he further revealed that he had some childhood heroes from the Indian cricket whom he used to look up to. He revealed that he always wanted to be like Anil Kumble or Mohammad Azharuddin. The spinner also revealed that he a big fan of VVS Laxman. He recalled the famous knock of Laxman from the 2001 Test match against Australia at the Eden Gardens. Sodhi said that the highlight of the innings was the fact that he played Shane Warne really well.

“While growing up, I wanted to be like Anil Kumble and Mohammad Azharuddin, he was a pretty amazing player with his wristy shots. I love VVS Laxman, a classy batter, I used to wear old Indian jersey with Laxman on back, I am a big fan of VVS, his innings of 281 against Australia was amazing, he played Shane Warne very well,” the blackcaps spinner said.

Sodhi will be associated with the Indian Premier League 2020 if it happens. For the past two seasons, he was an overseas recruit for Rajasthan Royals. However, this season he has signed for the franchise as the spin-bowling consultant and operations executive.