Consistency test beckons Himmat

A lot of people go through their careers without ever having captained their sides. Himmat Singh, however, lead the Delhi U-16 team in the Vijay Merchant Trophy in his debut season last year. Having asked to shoulder the responsibility, Himmat truly played a skipper's role. As a batsman, he scored 446 runs in seven innings and as a leader, he took Delhi to the penultimate stage in the last edition.

"Expectations were big considering the fact that it was for the first time that I was playing any board tournament. Before the start of the tournament, I was nervous but once we played the first match against Punjab and I got a fifty, things became more smoo"h," he says. The Delhi middle order batsman got six half centuries but missed out on a hundred on each occasion. He says it wasn't that he threw his wicket away but that he was unlucky. "

"It was a bad feeling. Every match I used to get starts but suddenly either a good ball or an uneven movement off the pitch restricted me from reaching the three-figure mark. I was happy to score eighties as it was helping the team's cause," Himmat says.

Although his performance was enough to see him attend the special talent camp in Mohali, he feels that had he converted those starts into big knocks, he could have made it to the National Cricket Academy camp with teammate Vivek Bhatu. The latter was the sole player selected to the NCA from Delhi.

A fresh challenge

When leading the side, he is called 'Veeru' by his teammates, in recognition of a 38-ball 80 with four massive sixes against Jharkhand in Nagpur during a Vijay Merchant knockout match.

"I idolise players like Kevin Pietersen, Michael Clarke and Sachin Tendulkar. I like to see Clarke batting as he bats at the same position as me. Plus the way he leads the Australian team is quite commendable," Himmat adds.

... contd.

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