"Since I've retired from India, my next goal was always to play against India" - Unmukt Chand ready to feature for USA in T20 World Cup 2024

Unmukt Chand, the 2012 Under-19 World Cup winning captain with India, is looking forward to the "very strange" feeling of playing for the USA against his home country at the upcoming 2024 T20 World Cup.

Chand is set to be eligible to play for the USA in March 2024, three months before the World Cup begins in the Caribbean and the States. Having retired from all forms of cricket in India in September 2021, he has almost fulfilled the eligibility criteria of staying in the USA for 10 months in a year for three years.

"[It is] something which would be very strange (laughs), but I think since I've retired from India, my next goal was always to sort of play against India, and not in any bad blood but keen to test myself out against the best team in the world," Unmukt Chand told Cricbuzz in a recent interview.

The top-order batter was one of the most exciting prospects in India in the early 2010s. However, after scoring a match-winning century in the U-19 World Cup final, he couldn't live up to the sky-high expectations.

Underwhelming returns in the domestic circuit forced Unmukt Chand to switch allegiance from Delhi to Uttarakhand, and in 2021 he moved to the USA. There, Chand impressed everyone by leading the Silicon Valley Strikers to the first Minor League Cricket T20 title and scoring over 1500 runs across three seasons.

If Chand gets selected for the USA, which is in the same World Cup group as India and Pakistan, he'd face some of the players he captained for India 'A' - including Jasprit Bumrah and Suryakumar Yadav.

"We used to call him Jasprit Gumrah" - Smit Patel, Unmukt Chand's teammate

Two more players from that 2012 Under-19 World Cup winning team, wicketkeeper-batter Smit Patel and spinner Harmeet Singh, have already qualified to play for the USA. Patel, who has played for Gujarat, Tripura and Baroda in India, moved to the States in 2020 and fondly remembers playing with Bumrah.

"Have spent a lot of time with Jassi over the years. Still remember the day he rocked up to practice for the first and he left us awestruck with what we were witnessing (laughs)," Smit told Cricbuzz. "The team had a name for him those day, we used to call him Jasprit Gumrah (confuse)."

India and the USA will take on each other at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York on June 12.