Meet The Indian Techies Who Turned Into Sports Stars
Indian-origin Saurabh Netravalkar, who represented the India under-19 team, and is now USA’s top cricketer, became an international sensation after winning the recent T20 World Cup match for USA against Pakistan. The interesting part: Netravalkar is the principal member of the technical staff at Oracle, where he has been working for eight years. Before relocating to the United States in 2015, Netravalkar had a brief stint in Indian domestic cricket. He represented Mumbai in the prestigious Ranji Trophy and was part of the India U-19 team, alongside future cricket stars including KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Harshal Patel, Jaydev Unadkat, and Sandeep Sharma. During the 2010 ICC U-19 World Cup, he emerged as India’s highest wicket-taker, securing nine wickets across six matches. A graduate of the University of Mumbai and the renowned Cornell University, Netravalkar also co-founded CricDeCode, an app dedicated to cricket. While social media is full of memes and tweets about the coder turned cricketer, we bring you a list of popular Indian sports personalities who also hold engineering degrees and once worked as techies. Manasi Joshi The Indian para-badminton player holds a degree in Electronics Engineering from K. J. Somaiya College of Engineering in Mumbai, and worked as a software engineer until a tragic accident in 2011 led to the amputation of her left leg. Despite this setback, Joshi found solace in badminton, which she had played since she was six years old. She started playing para-badminton in 2012 and won a gold medal at the 2019 Para-Badminton World Championships in Switzerland, becoming the first Indian athlete to win a gold medal in the sport. Shikha Pandey Pandey holds a degree in Electronics and Electrical Engineering from the Goa College of Engineering and also served as an Indian Air Force officer. After completing her engineering degree in 2010, Pandey was offered jobs by three multinational companies, but she declined all these placement offers and decided to take a year off and focus on her cricketing career. Pandey represented Goa in domestic cricket and was part of the Indian Women’s Cricket team that won the 2017 ICC Women’s World Cup Qualifier. At the time of the 2020 ICC Women’s T20 World Cup, she held the rank of Squadron Leader. Sathiyan Gnanasekaran Gnanasekaran holds a degree in Information Technology from St. Joseph’s College of Engineering in Chennai, and has worked for companies like ONGC as a software engineer. He started playing table tennis as a hobby and was spotted by former Indian paddler Subramanian Raman, who encouraged him to pursue the sport seriously. Gnanasekaran became the first Indian table tennis player to break into the World Top-25 ITTF rankings in May 2019, after attaining his career best World ranking of 24. Ravichandran Ashwin The famous Indian off-spinner pursued a B.Tech degree in Information Technology from SSN College of Engineering in Chennai, and worked as an engineer before turning to cricket. Ashwin started playing cricket at the age of nine for YMCA and was coached by Chandrasekar Rao during the early part of his career. He represented the Indian under-17 team as an opening batter and later took up medium-pace bowling before switching to off-spin. Akash Madhwal The Mumbai Indians star of IPL 2023, pursued a degree in civil engineering from the College of Engineering Roorkee in Uttarakhand. Before turning to cricket, he worked as a practicing engineer. Madhwal made his domestic cricket debut for Uttarakhand in 2019 and has since taken 67 wickets in 56 professional matches across formats. He joined the Mumbai Indians squad in 2022 as a replacement for the injured Suryakumar Yadav but did not get to play. However, in the 2023 IPL season, Madhwal seized his opportunity and delivered a record-breaking performance in the Eliminator match against Lucknow Super Giants. Shikha Tandon The renowned Indian swimmer did her B.Sc. in biotechnology, genetics, and biochemistry from Jain College, Bangalore, India in 2003. Tandon represented India at the 2004 Athens Olympics, where she participated in the 50m and 100m freestyle events, becoming the first Indian swimmer to qualify for two separate events in an Olympic competition. She has won 146 national medals and 36 international medals, including five gold medals. After retiring from competitive swimming in 2009, she moved to the USA to pursue a graduate course in bio-sciences. Tandon worked with the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) for over five years and is currently the Director of Global Partnerships at SVEXA, an exercise intelligence and sports analytics company. Anil Kumble The legendary Indian cricketer holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Rashtreeya Vidyalaya College of Engineering in Bangalore. He began his cricketing journey at a young age, playing for his school and later for the Karnataka State team. However, he did not give up his engineering career immediately. Before turning to cricket full-time, Kumble worked as an engineer for a brief period. He even created a software package for the Indian cricket team in 1996, which was an extension of the scoring sheet to gather data for analysis. Javagal Srinath, the former Indian fast bowler, and EAS Prasanna, the spin legend, also hold engineering degrees.
A number of versatile Indian engineers have been winning hearts across various sports formats.
Indian-origin Saurabh Netravalkar, who represented the India under-19 team, and is now USA's top cricketer, became an international sensation after winning the recent T20 World Cup match for USA against Pakistan. The interesting part: Netravalkar is the principal member of the technical staff at Oracle, where he has been working for eight years.
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Having done her undergrad in engineering and masters in journalism, Sukriti likes combining her technical know-how and storytelling to simplify seemingly complicated tech topics in a way everyone can understand