The 20-year-old KKR batter had an impactful first season last year, but he’s got his eye on even more silverware
Abhimanyu Bose26-Mar-2025In 2022, he was India’s highest run-scorer when they won the Under-19 World Cup. In 2024, he showcased an array of ramps, scoops and reverse-sweeps to help Kolkata Knight Riders lift the IPL trophy in his first season. Then, he was part of the Mumbai squad that won the 2024-25 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. For a young player with a single-minded focus on piling up silverware for his teams, Angkrish Raghuvanshi could barely have asked for a better start to his career.”I’m in love with the game. So I will do whatever it takes to improve, to work hard and try to win games for my team,” Raghuvanshi told ESPNcricinfo before the start of the 2025 IPL. “Because that’s what I love doing. That’s what I go to sleep wanting to do. That’s what I wake up wanting to do.”I’ve learned that what works for me is not setting personal goals in terms of runs and stuff,” he said. “It’s about how many games I want to win for my team during the season in every tournament that I play, and hopefully I can win the tournament for my team.”Those are my goals at the start of the season. And I feel that when I think [that way], it brings out the best in my performance as well.”Related
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After being picked up by KKR at the auction for the 2024 IPL, Raghuvanshi played his maiden Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy season, but had a middling outing. His highest score was 32, and he struck at 116.But in the IPL he made an immediate impact. In the first match he batted in, at the age of 19, he hammered 54 off 27 balls from No. 3 against Delhi Capitals to help KKR get to a mammoth score of 272, in the process becoming the second-youngest player to score a half-century in his maiden IPL innings.He started the knock with back-to-back boundaries off Anrich Nortje, and then reverse-swept medium-pacer Rasikh Salam for a six – the kind of innovation that became his mainstay as the season wore on. He made the No. 3 position his own, despite the presence of bigger stars like Venkatesh Iyer and KKR’s then-captain Shreyas Iyer in the side, and finished the season with 163 runs at a strike rate of 155.23.Unfazed by the prospect of facing the high pace of bowlers like Nortje, or taking on world-class spinners like Axar Patel, Raghuvanshi says he came prepared, not just in terms of technique, but also mentality.”I have asked this question a lot to my coach and with all the big players I have played with: that when a fast bowler or a very good spinner is running in, and he has done a lot in cricket, what goes through your mind? And they all just say the same thing. At the end of the day, he is just going to bowl and you have to watch the ball and play according to where it is.1:35
Raghuvanshi: ‘I watch athletes from other sports to learn what I can do to be better’
“So, [when] there was pressure and thoughts that Nortje is bowling to me, I just calmed myself down by saying that everyone just says: watch the ball and play according to the ball. When I told my mind that, it helped a lot and I could just focus on the ball.”And how does he get the confidence to walk out at the highest level and start ramping and reverse-sweeping fast bowlers?”We practised in a way that those shots were just normal run-scoring shots instead of audacious ones,” he said. “And leading up to the tournament, I practised it a lot, so it became natural. So, when I was there in the middle and there was pressure on me, I felt that I could rely on it to score runs.”The man chiefly responsible for Raghuvanshi’s preparation was his childhood coach Abhishek Nayar, who was also KKR’s assistant coach when they signed the young batter on.Raghuvanshi first met Nayar at the age of 11. Soon after, the youngster made the move from Delhi to Mumbai, even staying with Nayar – a mentor on and off the field – for a week.”He saw me play and worked with me and I felt a connection there. I got to learn so much from him in that one-week period when I was in Mumbai for the first time,” Raghuvanshi recalled. “It opened my mind to new things in the game. And ever since, I’ve just tried to learn as much as I can from him and he’s really been helpful in my entire journey.”He’s a great coach on the field and in life too. I think he’s helped me grow as a person as well,” Raghuvanshi said. “He taught me to be a really good person, to be a mature and respectful person off the field, and a smart and hardworking cricketer on the field.”Even before his batting exploits, Raghuvanshi caught the eye of KKR co-owner and Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan.
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“I met him after the first game, where I didn’t play,” Raghuvanshi said of meeting Shah Rukh, who he hadn’t expected would know his name. “But he came up to me and said, ‘Hey Angkrish, I have been watching you practise’. And that was a big moment for me. I couldn’t say anything at that moment. I just laughed and said thank you, because I froze.”Raghuvanshi also credited his KKR team-mates for the confidence they gave him after his maiden half-century, helping him understand his role in the team and teaching him how to become a team player.”I have the best team-mates. I was new to the system and they have been there for years. They have scored, I don’t know, hundreds of fifties. And it was just my first,” he said about his knock against DC. “But the appreciation and the confidence they gave me in that knock, I couldn’t have asked for more.”Even though he did not play KKR’s knockout games and was not among their retentions for the next season, the franchise outbid Chennai Super Kings in the auction for the 2025 IPL, securing his services for INR 3 crore.He was delighted to be back at a franchise he says feels like home, although he did admit the prospect of working with MS Dhoni, had CSK picked him, was exciting.Raghuvanshi comes from a family of athletes. His father, Avneesh, was a tennis player while his mother, Malika, represented India in basketball, and he feels their sporting legacy has helped his journey.”When I was a kid, both my mom and dad made me play different sports. My dad made me play tennis with him. My mom made me play basketball with her. And obviously cricket, because I’m from an Indian family,” he said. “So I think it has been inculcated into me, the habit of playing sports.”Raghuvanshi scored a half-century in his first IPL innings, and finished with 163 runs in seven innings•BCCIWhile white-ball cricket is where he has made a name so far, he harbours bigger ambitions than just being a T20 dasher. He made his first-class debut in the 2024-25 Ranji Trophy season and scored 92 as an opener in his second game, against Odisha. He followed that up with an unbeaten half-century against Services, and says he wants to be a Test cricketer “like every other kid in India”.”I grew up watching a lot of Test cricket, big tournaments like the Ashes and the Border Gavaskar Trophy and all that, so obviously, I also want to one day be a Test cricketer. I also love the strategies that come with four-day, five-day cricket. You have to plan very well, while fielding, while bowling, while batting.”Raghuvanshi has come into the 2025 IPL in good form, with two half-centuries in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, and scored a 22-ball 30 in his first IPL game this season.Now, playing under Ajinkya Rahane, who was his captain when he made his debut for Mumbai, Raghuvanshi has his sights set on his next goal – to add more silverware to an already glittering resume.