“I did not know. That’s news to me.”

Netravalkar, the USA left-arm fast bowler, successfully defended 18 runs by a comfortable margin to help his team record the biggest shock of the T20 World Cup 2024. It was the biggest day in the history of the game for USA, who had gained entry to the 20-team tournament as co-hosts along with West Indies.

On the surface, Netravalkar, who led USA between 2018 and 2021, showed no nerves through the over, which stretched to eight deliveries because of a couple of wides. The only thing he was concerned with, he says, was if he had got right how many runs Pakistan needed off the final delivery.

“I actually confirmed two-three times with the umpire as to how many runs they need – six or seven,” Netravalkar says over a Zoom call from New York two days after the win. “When he said seven, I gave a sigh of relief that I just have to prevent him from hitting a six.” He sank to his knees in relief and joy after Shadab Khan squeezed out just a single.

“I felt very grateful and relieved that, yes, we came over the line, because each individual in the playing XI had made very important – small, yet very important -contributions throughout the game.”

Was it was the most important over of his career? Netravalkar has no doubt.

“This was the closest game that I have played. And obviously the top-most quality team that we have played so far in our cricketing career. So yes, it was a really special game for each one of us and we will remember it for a long time.”

Netravalkar, who is now 32 and holds a US H1B visa (for workers in specialty occupations), developed his interest in cricket thanks to Naresh. Father and son avidly watched international matches together in the 1990s and early 2000s. Wasim Akram, Chaminda Vaas and Zaheer Khan were some of the fast bowlers Netravalkar imitated during those impressionable years.

“It was very solid support for Pakistan throughout the game,” Harmeet says on the same Zoom call after we finish the chat with Netravalkar. “A lot of green shirts.”

He says that as underdogs USA were not expecting big support despite being the host country. With cricket not on the radar of the average American sports fan, the support mainly comes from the South Asian diaspora. “Till the time we actually made 18 runs in the Super Over, the Pakistani fans were really loud,” Harmeet says. “But a lot of them live in the US, so I think you are pretty much able to convert a lot of Pakistani fans into US fans. From shouting ‘Pakistan zindabad‘, by the end of the match I heard those change to ‘USA, USA.'”

Harmeet decided he would take the plunge, and it proved a turning point for the talented left-arm spinner, whose career had stalled after a promising start. He has permanent-resident status in the US now. Like Netravalkar, he too comes from Mumbai. He played two U-19 World Cups for India – in 2010 and 2012. Among his contemporaries were Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav, who are currently playing for India in the World Cup.

Four years on, with the USA now one win away from making the Super 8, Harmeet says that back then if you had told him he would be playing in a World Cup, he would never have believed it.

“When I made the move in 2020, mid-Covid, it was like investing in a property with no building [on it]. So I invested in just the land. And now we have structures. Now we have things coming up. The guys who came with me [team-mates from South Asia] – we all call ourselves early investors in USA cricket.”

Like Netravalkar and the rest of his USA team-mates, Harmeet has played cricket mostly indoors over the years, worked day jobs (at times more than one, in the case of some players) and travelled around the country to play weekend cricket. All so they can be ready for big days like in Dallas against Pakistan last week.

“Personally, thinking about a World Cup, getting into a World Cup from a situation where all the club cricketers were practising indoors, and then beating Pakistan on a world stage, it is a big deal,” Harmeet says. “Everybody’s goal is to play the World Cup for your country and win it and everything, which [playing for India] couldn’t happen for whatever reasons, but I’m trying to live my own dream in a different way.”

On Wednesday, Netravalkar and Harmeet get to play against the country they originally dreamed of playing for at the World Cup. Both men say it will be an emotional moment.

“It’s been a very transformative journey for me filled with ups and downs,” says Netravalkar, who works for software giant Oracle in San Francisco. After the Pakistan win, a screen grab of his Slack out-of-office message was all over social media. It said he would be away from work until June 17, when the group phase of the World Cup ends. Netravalkar is not thinking ahead to whether he might have to extend his leave of absence in case USA make it to the Super 8s. His employers have been cooperative and understand he has stretched himself to fulfil his responsibilities at work, he says.

Netravalkar is a man of varied interests. Among other things, he plays the ukelele and sings along in Marathi, his mother tongue. It was his “destiny”, he says, to become eligible to play for USA; in 2018, soon after he moved, the ICC relaxed the norms for a player to be able to represent an Associate country from seven years as a resident to three. “But [destiny] comes only when you have the right intent and you put in those extra yards that things then start aligning for you,” he says. “You can look back and connect the dots, but you can’t look forward. So the best thing you can do is be in the present moment and do the best that you can.”

Harmeet, who is 31, lives in Houston with his wife and two young kids. In an interview with the Indian Express before the World Cup, he spoke about the harrowing experience of watching his mother, Paramjit’s, last rites on a screen after she died of Covid in 2021. Back in Mumbai when he was a teenager with stars in his eyes, she regularly accompanied him from Borivali in the north of the city to Shivaji Park Gymkhana in Dadar – a trip of about an hour from their home – on the local train so Harmeet could get the best coaching possible. He says he is living her dream too, playing the World Cup.