From Mohali to Malahide: the fairytale journey of Simi Singh

Making it as an international cricketer is no mean feat. You’re out there competing with thousands of other fellow inspired and driven athletes, knowing very well that the probability of your dream coming true is indeed pretty low - unless, of course, you’re a wonderchild. On top of that, you’re expected to make sacrifices and tough choices at a pretty young age and forced to accept the fact that your life simply cannot be the same as the other kids in your neighborhood. While they are strolling back home after the school bell rings, you’re rushing to change your attire to sweat it out in the heat; by the time they wake up at 10 am on a Sunday morning, you’ve already spent four hours at the ground, now contemplating whether you should continue or go back home. 

“Like everyone else in India, I picked up the sport by playing street cricket. So I joined an academy in Mohali around the age of 11/12. I lived close to the PCA stadium, so I joined the academy there during summer holidays - in the year of 1999, to be precise. The Cricket World Cup was on, so obviously when you’re watching the World Cup, you want to play cricket. So that’s where it all started,” Simi told SportsCafe in an exclusive chat. 

“The turning point for me, when I actually thought I can do something in cricket, was an under-14 tournament; it was a school national tournament in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh. I did well in that tournament, I was the best all-rounder, and actually that’s where I started bowling off-spin regularly.

“And then I came back to Mohali and played BCCI age-group state-level tournaments (under-14, under-15 and under-16) where I was more of an opening batsman. At that point, my bowling took a step back, because in India, the culture back then was more specialist, so I was a specialist opening batsman.”

“In the year of 2003/04, I scored a lot of runs in the local tournament but did not get picked for the Punjab Under-19 state team. After that, the following year, I did not do great and thus did not get into the state sides. So that was the turning point for me,” he spoke of his frustration.

“Knowing what the situation was, I realized that it would be difficult for me to get into the team. So I had two options at my disposal: either I could have changed my state and gone elsewhere, or changed the country. So I decided to  move to Ireland because I had a friend over there (from India) who played cricket.”

However, years on, Simi did get his revenge on those men, proving them wrong, and, as he recalls, it was ‘a good story’. 

“When I came to Ireland as a student, things were completely different - there were no parents to help me out; I had to do everything on my own - I had to go to college, I had to cook and work part-time. This was a couple of months before the cricket season. When the cricket season started, I went to a club to join it.

Starting off at the lowest of tiers in Irish cricket, the all-rounder slowly but steadily made his way through the system and, remarkably, made his international debut for Ireland at the age of 30 - 12 years after moving to the country. Simi shed light on his frustrating yet inspiring journey and, interestingly, revealed how months prior to making his international debut, he’d completely given up hope on playing for Ireland.

“I thought of getting picked for the ‘A’ side as my last chance. I just wanted to enjoy the trip as I thought that it could be my last ever cricket trip, but that’s where things changed. I did well on that trip and I got my Irish Citizenship in the same month and then I made my Ireland debut the next month. It was a pretty amazing couple of months for me.” 

However, it was not just his early days in Ireland that were interesting. Playing at a pretty high level in a talent-rich country meant that in age-group competitions, Simi rubbed shoulders with some of India’s finest - including Ishant Sharma and skipper Virat Kohli. Reflecting on his bouts with big names in Indian cricket during his teenage days, Simi recalled an under-16 game in the mid 2000s versus Delhi, where he came up against both Virat Kohli and Ishant Sharma. The all-rounder, however, was pretty honest about his assessment of Kohli as a youngster, admitting that he’d not heard much about the now-Indian skipper back then.

“We hadn’t heard of him (Kohli) that much and there were a few other players whose name was more out there; we’d known someone like Piyush Chawla more, for instance,” he recalled his meeting with Kohli and Ishant.

The all-rounder, however, expressed his admiration for Kohli’s remarkable journey since then and added that he looked back on that U16 game against Delhi when he bowled to the Indian skipper in a T20I clash against India at Malahide in 2018, his first-ever game against his country of birth.

The summer of 2018 was a breakthrough season for the Irish all-rounder, for it saw him pick 17 wickets in 15 international games. Of those 15 games were a couple of T20Is against India, where the visiting Indian side paid a brief visit to Ireland before their blockbuster tour of England. After bowling a solitary over for 12 runs in the first T20I, which Ireland lost by 76 runs, Simi was interestingly summoned upon to open the bowling in the second game by skipper Gary Wilson. 

Things did not quite go according to plan for the off-spinner, who finished his spell with figures of 2-0-32-0, but interestingly, he revealed that it was only 10 minutes prior to taking the field that he knew that he was going to bowl the first over. Simi shed light on the challenge of bowling with a brand new Kookaburra ball and against a quality batsman like KL Rahul and revealed that his thought process heading into the over was to just contain the runs. 

“The thing with the kookaburra ball also is that when it’s brand new, it’s slippery. So for a spinner, it’s hard to grip the ball; you can’t really get enough grip on the ball to make it do something. I knew it was going to be difficult as there was Rahul, who loves to take the game on from ball one, but I was happy in a way as I knew I was opening the bowling and that the captain had entrusted me to do the job. Rahul played a couple of good shots over mid-off; I think I ended up conceding 9 or 10 runs off the over - you’d take that in T20.

“I was just looking to contain. I was just looking to bowl into batsman’s pads because I had a long on and a deep mid-wicket. So that was my plan and thought process: if the batsman decided to take the long-on fielder on, then I had a chance. But Rahul played against the spin - there wasn’t much spin because the ball was new - and hit it over mid-off; not all players would do that, they would try to hit with the spin.”

However, as is the case in life, in sport, too, some failures end up teaching you many a valuable lesson and for Simi, the two wicketless encounters in India turned out to be a blessing in disguise, for he learnt the importance and necessity of adding more variations to his armoury. 

“It was a learning experience for me. It was disappointing because after the match, I got a lot of negative messages, but it was a learning experience. I learnt that I can’t just bowl conventional off-spin - i.e spin the ball one way -  and expect success, especially in T20 cricket, because now the players are too good; doesn’t matter if you’ll bowl a good-length delivery, they’re good enough to come down the track and smash you. So that was a turning point for me to bring in more variations into my bowling,” the off-spinner said of the lessons he’d learnt in the India series.

“Since then, I’ve been working on bowling leg-spin in the same action. It took me a year or two to develop that. I used to bowl leg-spin when I was younger so I had the wrists to do it, but the key was to be able to practice and be able to land it right. In the last couple of series, actually, I have got a couple of wickets (bowling leg spin): I’ve got Kieron Pollard out in the series against West Indies and I got Mohammad Nabi out against Afghanistan.

“The idea behind is more about getting into the batsmen’s mind - now they can’t just come down the track; now they’ve to think If I’m going to bowl off spin or leg-spin. I’ve been working on the flipper as well, so I’ve got a few variations now, which gives me more options. That’s the way the game is, now - you cannot just bowl conventional finger spin in T20 cricket.”