Abhishek’s advice a confidence-booster for Virk  – The Hindu

At 5 a.m., when most of Patiala was asleep, Sagar Virk was already on his way to the cricket ground.

Those early mornings, followed by a full day of cricket, have been part of the 17-year-old’s journey from a boy watching his elder brother Manveer Singh play to featuring for India under-19.

The road was not always smooth. Sagar was overlooked for Punjab in his first year of under-16 cricket and missed out again the following year. His coach, Himanshu Chawla, however, kept reminding him where the game could take him.

“My coach showed a lot of belief in me. He told me, ‘You can do it. U-19 is the main level. Once you start playing there, you can even go on to play for India’,” Sagar told The Hindu.

He kept turning up, and the reward was an India under-19 call-up. On the tour of Sri Lanka, a 134 in the first Youth ‘Test’. After returning home, he shared a dressing room with Abhishek Sharma in the Sher-e-Punjab T20 tournament for Amritsar Soormas.

Abhishek, he says, was “very chilled out” and urged the youngsters to “play your own game”. “During difficult moments, Abhishek bhaiya’s message was simple: ‘Nothing will happen, just bat properly. We will get there.’” And those words gave all of us a lot of confidence,” he said.

Buoyed by confidence, Virk is now ready for the Youth ‘Tests’ against Australia.