- September 10, 2024
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With two batters still to go and 12 overs left to play out in the second of its five-match T20i series against the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago, to say the United States U19 women’s cricket team was in a difficult situation would be an understatement.
But as Suresh Vallabhaneni cheered on his adopted country, a sinking feeling weighed down his chest when he saw who was coming up to bat for the U.S. His 17-year-old daughter, Sasha, was about to make her national team debut in a less-than-favorable state.
“With the whole national organization watching and the team in a very, very bad state in the match, that’s when she walked into the match,” he said. “I’m like, ‘This can’t be how she makes her debut.’ As a parent, I’m just thinking to myself, ‘This is such bad timing.’ It felt like she was getting thrown to the wolves.”
He wasn’t the only one who was nervous, Sasha, a Windermere Prep senior, felt as if her heart was going to end up outside her chest.
“The score was around 20 for five, and it was the eighth over … so it was a very high-pressure situation,” she said. “When I first walked onto that field, I thought I could hear my own heartbeat. It was so scary. I don’t think I’ll ever be put in a worse situation than that. At first, I was pretty nervous. I could feel my hands tighten up.”
At that moment, though, she just kept telling herself it didn’t matter that she never had played on this stage. It didn’t matter that she was nervous. It didn’t matter that she was in a difficult spot. All that mattered was that her team needed her.
“Someone had to step up,” Sasha said. “And at that moment, I had to. We didn’t have a choice, it had to be me. So that was like the biggest thing going through my head. After I played around five, six balls, I saw that I was middling the ball well, and it just started to feel like any other game. I just kept telling myself to see the ball, just see the ball. I started to feel good and kept telling myself that I could do this … that this is just like any other game. I kept reminding myself that I’m here for a reason. I put in all this work, so I needed to keep backing myself.”
Sasha not only finished the match as the top scorer for the U.S., but also made an impression on those watching.
“She proved herself that day to the entire team,” Suresh Vallabhaneni said. “She stood there and battled with that immense pressure on her shoulders. Looking back to that moment, I think it’s going to be a defining moment in her cricketing career. … People saw what she was capable of under pressure. Being a newbie and going into a national-level game for the first time ever … and delivering for her team was incredible. Even though they ended up losing, she got the team to the point where at least they had a chance to fight it out.”
Sasha also proved to herself she belonged.
“I came out of that game really confident in myself, in what I had shown to everybody at USA Cricket,” she said. “I feel like in a way nobody really expected anything out of me. … So to just prove myself and show that I can step up when the team needs — it was such a big thing for me.”
This moment was one the Vallabhanenis will remember for a long time, but the part of Sasha’s journey that truly stands out is that she picked up the sport because her dad said it would look good on her college applications.
“We never thought cricket would become a game that we would introduce her to,” Suresh Vallabhaneni said. “It’s always been tennis, swimming and all the regular American sports for her. But during COVID, we were in the backyard playing with a tennis ball, and we asked Sasha if she wanted to try cricket. I told her that I would teach her and she should give it a shot, to see where it goes.”
Initially, Sasha didn’t enjoy the fact that there weren’t enough resources in the area when she started playing and there were even fewer girls playing the sport.
“I had to start learning how to play in a softball cage, because there was not a proper field,” she said. “When I started … my dad put something up in our backyard, and he coached me. Like, I didn’t have an actual coach, he taught me my first skills — how to throw a ball, things like that.”
Still, she stuck with the sport and continued to develop her craft by joining a men's league — playing for the Florida Youth Panthers Cricket Academy — and continuing to practice with her father in the backyard. But then, six months in, she had an aha moment.
“There was a selection tournament in North Carolina that my dad found out about, so we flew up there for a weekend, and I played in it against some of the national players and felt like I could hang with those girls,” she said. “The other thing that was amazing that weekend was that for the first time, I saw how many girls are playing, so it was like, a big eye-opener for me to see that there’s so many girls my age playing.”
From that weekend on, Sasha was locked in.
“That was where it all kind of started,” she said. “I joined an academy in North Carolina, and I would go, maybe like once or twice a month on the weekends to compete. To this day, I still go to North Carolina to train with my coach two out of every three weekends.”
As Sasha grew in the sport, the potential she saw in herself at that initial camp started to come to fruition, and her dream of making the national team quickly became a reality.
“When I got the call and my official email came in, it was the most amazing feeling ever,” Sasha said about receiving her first call-up to the U19 national team. “When I was reading the email, I was literally laughing and thinking to myself, ‘Is this actually happening?’ There was so much build-up to that moment, so it was like all the hard work finally paid off.”
Still, despite breaking through to the national team and making her mark during her time in Trinidad and Tobago, she knows the hard work isn’t over. She’s got plenty left to accomplish in the sport.
“The short-term goal was always to make the U19 national team for the World Cup in January 2025,” Sasha said. “Playing in the Olympics for the U.S. in 2028 is the long-term goal. … I feel like I’m on the right track, especially now that I’ve played on the U19 team. I feel like I’m definitely headed in the right direction, but obviously, I still have to keep working and keep getting better, but it feels within reach, so it’s exciting.”
