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"My first day at the club they asked me, 'What are you?' I said I am a pace bowler".
Just over five-and-half years ago, on April 18, 2017, Raj Limbani took his last exam of seventh standard and left Dayapar, a village of around 5,000 people in Kutchh, to shift 550 kilometers away to Vadodara.
Raj was persuaded to do so by Manilal Patel, his father's elder brother. An employee of the Gujarat state government, Patel had taken a transfer to Vadodara sometime previously to facilitate his nephew's dream of becoming a cricketer.
Neither knew much about the sport or where to start, though. After Raj shifted to Patel's new government quarters in the city, a family friend with some cricketing history suggested they consider the nearby Motibaug Cricket Club.
Motibaug was one of the oldest cricket grounds in the country and had been the breeding soil for the two most popular all-rounder brother pairs from India - the Pathans (Yusuf and Irfan) and the Pandyas (Hardik and Krunal).
Raj knew little about any of that because he had hardly followed the sport while growing up. His love for the art was practical and also his only inspiration.
"I used to bowl pace in gully cricket with a tennis ball," he told Sportskeeda in an exclusive chat. "Since then I knew I wanted to become a pace bowler. [I loved] threatening the batter with pace. When I went to the club for the very first day, they asked me, 'What are you?' I said I am a pace bowler."
Between 2017-2021, Motibaug became the cauldron for Raj's development into a tall, strongly built (for his age, especially) pace machine. Sometime in between he took affection to Dale Steyn and Jasprit Bumrah.
Steyn would agree that the simplest actions are the meanest. Raj runs and bowls as if it's all just one motion. And a bit like Bumrah, his load-up suits in-swing like jalebi with fafda. There would be hardly any other 18-year-old in India who could make the ball move as much at his level, at least at the 135-140 kph he consistently hits.
Out-swing is mostly an element of 'bluff' for him and he goes for seaming the ball only when there's no help from the wicket.
"I had a very natural action, I had never worked on loading-'woading'," Raj said. "My mentors [in Motibaug] helped me perfect that part of bowling."
Raj got a chance at the Vinoo Mankad and Cooch Behar trophies in 2021. In 12 matches across three years, he picked up 52 wickets. As his bowling speed went up, the attention of Moibaug's star alumni followed.
"He (Irfan Pathan) came to practice at the club one day," Raj said. "I bowled to him and bowled fast so he got beaten a couple of times. Then he asked, 'Who is this bowler?' Then we had a high-performance game in NCA Bangalore (July 2023) and he was with us there for 10-12 days. So since then, he knows that this guy is from Baroda."
Now, the right-arm pacer is sponsored by the same RNS Larsons who helped and signed Irfan when he was just starting his career in Baroda.
Family boy
Being the youngest, Raj has always been the apple of his 11-member family. When his coaching started, his elder sisters helped him out by picking up and dropping him off at Motibaug. In their early years, the family used to press him for studies but stepped back into a more supportive role as he got more success.
So far, he has reposed that by keeping his focus intact. Usually, he starts cricket training early in the morning and practices till around 12:30 pm. He then goes to the gym from 4-6 pm and carries out his puja (prayer) for 15-20 minutes after returning home. This is followed by some light stretching and a timely retreat to the bed.
"He doesn’t like meeting too many people," Raj's brother, Hardik Limbani, told Sportskeeda. "He either just wants to play cricket or stay at home, and isn’t too interested in going out to party and all that."
Even outside cricket, he's a sports buff who loves playing football, kabaddi, Kho-Kho, and badminton — the games he played even before starting cricket back in Dayapar — whenever he needs something else to enjoy.
Wearing the Indian blue
Raj's consistent performances at the age-group level brought him a promotion to the BCCI men's U-19 One Day Challenger Trophy late last year and eventually a selection to India's squad for the 2023 Under-19 Asia Cup in Dubai.
He picked up three wickets in the first match of the tournament against Afghanistan. In the second match against Pakistan, he bowled a splendid but wicketless spell, beating the batters and getting thick edges multiple times.
India lost the match and he was the only one to complete 10 overs, at the cost of 44 runs — the best economy rate for a pacer in the match.
That lost luck came surging back against Nepal. On a pitch with surfeit help available for fast bowlers, Raj took the first wicket in his third over and struck four more blows to register a fifer in the 13th over of the innings. He concluded with seven wickets for just 13 runs, helping India skittle out Nepal for just 52.
"I believe I bowled pretty well against Pakistan as well but I didn’t get wickets," Raj said. "Before we played against Nepal when I was warming up, I had a feeling that I was able to catch a good rhythm and I would bowl well. In the start itself, I was able to take 2-3 wickets and after that, I stopped thinking about wickets. I focused on swinging the ball and through that I got wickets."
He recorded the second-best figure by an Indian (7/13) at youth level. The best was from Irfan (9/16) in 2003 against Bangladesh U-19.
And the similarities don't end here. Like 'Baroda Express' Irfan, Raj gave signs of being a rhythm demon (a quality also seen in Stuart Broad and Mohammed Siraj) in that spell. It looked like on his day, he could blow a team away by mercilessly pitching the ball in the right areas and setting the batters up for the in-swing. Even if they guessed what was coming, he was just too quick to not beat their defences.
Ruling the future
India failed to advance past the group stage despite Raj being the best bowler again versus Bangladesh in the next match. However, the seven-for was enough to get him a ticket to South Africa for the 2024 U-19 World Cup.
"When I first got to know that my name was on the list, the first thing I did was call my 'bade papa' (Patel) and inform him as he was my support throughout the years" Raj said.
"But at the same time, my matches were going on in the quadrangular series... and the final of that series was the very next day, so I didn’t get a lot of time to celebrate. We had meetings and all. I then just informed my father, felt happy, and then back to the present by joining the meetings on that day."
Raj was also one of eight players in the World Cup squad who got shortlisted for the IPL 2024 auction. But due to a clash with the same quadrangular series, he couldn't attend the trials of a few IPL franchises who called him to express their interest in seeing him bowl before the auction.
South Africa seemed like the ideal place for him but the pitches in India's three matches so far have been flat. Due to the team's penchant for rotating personnel, Raj played the first and third games, against Bangladesh and the USA, and picked up the first wicket of India's innings in both matches.
He has formed a lethal pairing with left-arm seamer Naman Tiwari at the other end. With the spinners backing them well, India has registered three wins in as many games so far in the tournament.
"The target has remained the same — to do as good in the World Cup as I did in the Asia Cup," he said. "When my name came in the World Cup list, I just had this one feeling, “I have to pick up the trophy and get a picture clicked with it (smiles)."
He's the first sporting member in his family and the first kid in Dayapar to come this far in cricket. He no longer has to worry about studying. People who knew him as a kid now tell him that they knew he played but never thought he was this good at it.
But ask them, his family members, anyone who has watched him bowl, and Raj himself, everyone knows this is just the start.
"For the near future..." Raj said. "I just have to win the World Cup, make a debut in every format in domestic cricket, do well, play the IPL, play for India, and then keep playing for India."
