New Delhi, Oct 30 (IANS) On Wednesday evening, Sai Satya Vijay sat alone in a hotel room in Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh, with his eyes firmly fixed on the WPL auction happening in Kochi for next year’s season. His niece, Uma Kashvi, was in another hotel across town, with her teammates for the Under-19 Challenger Trophy, set to begin at the Luhnu Cricket Ground on Friday.
Back home in Bengaluru, Kashvi’s parents Vijitha and Praveen Kumar were watching the same auction feed. When Kashvi’s name came up, number 68 on the auction list, Delhi Capitals opened the bidding at her base price of Rs 10 lakh.
No other franchise bid against them, as at 15 years and 202 days, Kashvi became the youngest player ever signed at a WPL auction and surpassed Haryana batter Deeya Yadav, who set the record last year at 16. “I cried for like two, three minutes. It was a moment you were waiting for,” Vijay told IANS in a free-wheeling conversation.
Kashvi’s record signing shows how far down the search for talent in Indian women’s cricket now reaches. Her journey to that record-breaking WPL deal is the story of a village firmly behind her: a family that split its home in two, parents who stepped down the corporate ladder, and an uncle who gave his niece the cricketing life he never had.
Vijay grew up in Andhra Pradesh and played district-level cricket that, he says, ‘cannot be even counted.’ There was no infrastructure and no support system. He fought his parents to keep playing, but eventually gave up to go into the IT world.
The game, though, never left him. Every April 24, he cuts a cake for Sachin Tendulkar’s birthday and visit a temple wearing new clothes, a ritual he followed for a long time. He has kept photographs of all 100 of the legendary batter’s international centuries. “I can’t say I am a fan. “I am a devotee of Sachin Tendulkar,” he said.
He helped raise Kashvi, born on April 9, 2011, a week after Tendulkar finally laid his hands on the ODI World Cup trophy at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. Vijay observed that Kashvi was a sporty child who grasped things quickly, whether in classroom or on the field.
In 2019, he took her to an academy near the family home when she was seven and a half years. A young kid does not have the strength to hit fours and sixes, so he and another coach worked on two things: fitness and technique. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Kashvi’s days began at 5:30am with fitness work, before leaving for school.
Evenings were group sessions of learning the nuances of the game and about 30 overs of side-arm throwdowns from Vijay with semi-soft balls. “She used to get one body blow per day, for sure,” he said. Her mother found the daily bruises hard to look at, but Kashvi came home happy anyway.
When the pandemic shut schools, Vijay used the empty nets of an academy to sharpen Kashvi’s technique. The pull shot became her signature stroke. “I used to tell her, you are a female Rohit Sharma – same pull shot,” he said.
With few girls’ matches around, Kashvi played with older boys. At nine, she usually batted at number 11, bowled two overs in a 50-over game and fielded or kept wicket. Most of her first 100 matches went that way.
The break came through Shantha Rangaswamy, India’s first women’s Test captain, who brought Kashvi into the India Nippon Cup, where each side mixed four India internationals with local players. At nine, Kashvi shared a dressing room with Veda Krishnamurthy, Jemimah Rodrigues, her WPL skipper at DC, Deepti Sharma and Shreyanka Patil.
Arjun Dev, now her coach at NICE Academy in Bengaluru, recalled wanting to know about the child who took Shreyanka’s place in the playing eleven. “I was obviously livid. What is an eight- or nine-year-old doing, firstly playing in this tournament and then taking Shrey’s spot?” he recalled to IANS.
Then he watched her play and felt she was indeed very talented. “Everyone knew that she had the talent, she had the skill.” Kashvi won the Young Talent Award in that competition and Vijay says, ex-India skipper Mithali Raj walked beside her until she left the ground and passed on top about how to grow as a player.
Jemimah took to Kashvi, then a bubbly child, and in later years spent a few minutes giving her advice whenever they met. “As a nine-year-old kid, she was good enough to play in the seniors category. But then BCCI rules said anyone below 13 cannot be a part of it,” said Shantha.
Vijay says Shantha let Kashvi play senior zonal probables matches at nine but would not select her. He recalls her saying, “I cannot put her into the senior team, even though she has the skill, because of the age. It will backfire.”
Former India player Veda Krishnamurthy also picked Kashvi as wicketkeeper for her club side, and Vijay says the nine-year-old made an unbeaten 185 in a senior league match. At 12, she struck an unbeaten 217 in a junior inter-school tournament in Bengaluru.
But Vijay feared for Kashvi going behind the stumps. “When MS Dhoni came, there were a lot of wicketkeepers who lost their careers,” he said. He then taught her off-spin. It meant she would be more involved in the game, and became an all-rounder who can be a keeper when asked.
Kashvi’s career rests on a careful division of labour between Vijay and her parents. Her mother, Vijitha, a senior manager who has spent more than 17 years at a multinational firm, turned down promotions requiring more travel.
Her father, Praveen Kumar, who studied for a master’s degree in the USA, left salaried work about five years ago to start his own company so he could be available. Vijay stepped down a position and now works a few hours a day as a consultant.
As Kashvi approached adolescence, Vijay requested Vijitha to travel with her for matches. A day after her birthday, Kashvi got her first period at a ground, dressed in whites for a red-ball match. Vijitha quickly went out and bought sanitary pads.
There was no washroom, so Kashvi changed behind some bushes, then played and scored runs. From that day, Vijitha has majorly worked from the grounds and attending meetings online via Microsoft Teams, including on the day Kashvi made her India Under-19 debut against Sri Lanka in Chennai earlier this year.
For two and a half years, the family has lived apart. Their home is in Bellandur, in Bengaluru’s south-east region, while NICE Academy is near the Kempegowda airport. Vijay and Kashvi live near the academy, and her parents visit at weekends.
“It is very, very tough. As a family, you don’t stay together,” said Vijay. Moving out was not an option for her parents. “We are not from a rich family background. We need to work for our bread,” he said. They have not had a holiday in three years. Their only trips are temple pilgrimages. Vijay, who is unmarried, says he does not plan to marry. “For me, Kash is priority number one.”
School, too, has bent around the game. In Class eight, Kashvi attended for 21 days. The school agreed she would come only for exams. She now studies through open schooling and is due to sit her Class 10 exams in March, though tournaments have left little time for books.
When the auction news spread, Vijitha’s managers in the US told her to take two days off and celebrate. At a time when industry layoffs are aplenty due to pivot towards AI, Vijay said, that support matters.
Kashvi joined NICE at 13 and Dev now counts her among his closest friends. “For a 15-year-old, the maturity level that she shows is unbelievable. She also understands my jokes very quickly.”
He says there is little to fix technically. The work is about belief. “I think she undervalues her talent and ability a little bit. Our job has honestly been to push her out of her comfort zone.”
He had long urged her to bowl her off-spin with a more attacking field, five fielders on the leg side instead of four. She kept saying she was not ready. At an Under-19 game, she was still using the safer setting. In the next match, she switched. “She was so happy and said, ‘Yeah, I could bowl with it,’” said Dev.
Dev saw a captain early. Under her leadership, her club side won all 11 tournaments it entered. “She has always been our first-choice captain,” he said, adding he would pick her ahead of senior players because ‘it makes my life easy.’
She has captained Karnataka’s Under-15 side and led Bengaluru Blasters in the Maharani Trophy, the state’s women’s T20 competition, and scored 48 off 42 balls against Mysore Warriors in the 2025 edition.
In the 2025/26 Under-15 One-Day Trophy, she was the leading run-scorer, with 516 runs at an average of 172, including three centuries. Against Manipur in Kolkata in January, she hit an unbeaten 158 off 66 balls, with 23 fours and seven sixes, as Karnataka won by 275 runs.
She also played in Karnataka’s Under-19 T20 side and in the one-day team that reached the semifinals, before getting India Under-19 call-up against Sri Lanka in June and July. She took four wickets in three T20s and two in two one-day games.
On October 22, in the Under-19 T20 quarterfinal against Vidarbha, she took 3-18 as Karnataka defended 140 to win by six runs, and was named player of the match. Vijay has deliberately not rushed her. Last season, with continuous cricket leaving her with wrist pain, he was wary of an early senior debut. “If you jump the guns and try to take a faster, steep step, and if you fail there, the fall will be very bad,” he said.
Dev is blunter. After the Under-19 tournament, he gave her a dressing-down, wanting quicker scoring and more intent from the start. “It’s just not good enough,” he recalled telling her.
Is she ready to set the WPL on fire, provided she is not picked for next year’s U-19 World Cup in Bangladesh and Nepal? “I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. Time will tell. If she doesn’t (become a remarkable cricketer), then the failure is on us as much. She has the raw material (to be one).
Dev stated that Kashvi’s WPL signing left everyone surprised. After Kashvi’s signing was sealed, Shreyanka was the first to call Vijay, who was in tears. Jemimah texted him ‘welcome home’ with a blue heart and a red heart, the franchise’s colours.
Years earlier, she had sent Kashvi a birthday video hoping they would one day share India’s colours. Later, on a call with Kashvi, she teased the Bengaluru teenager: “Are you sad that you did not go to RCB?” She also told her DC’s scouts had been following her for some time.
Vijay had hoped for Delhi because of how it has groomed young players such as Niki Prasad and Sree Charani – “mentally, physically, as well as your game-wise”. Shantha calls Kashvi a batting all-rounder with great fielding ability. “I have seen her take one catch and it looked like she was floating in the air,” she said.
Shantha’s one worry is fitness as Kashvi grows. Otherwise, she says, ‘for her age, she is too mature, and I think she has a very sane head on her shoulders.’ Shantha also has a message for cricket fans eager to see Kashvi in action.
“People who haven’t watched her, please hold your breath. I can assure you she will be the talk of the town in the days and years to come.” Vijay says Kashvi models herself on all-rounders such as Ashleigh Gardner and Hayley Matthews to become a player the depends on with bat and ball for winning games.
The coming months will test Kashvi in new ways, from the Under-19 World Cup to the expectations a record WPL contract brings. For now, the recognition is enough for Kashvi, Vijay and Dev. The tests, and the chance to show what she can do, will come very soon.
–IANS
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