Vriitya Aravind confident 'my time will come' as batter looks to regain spot in UAE team

Exiled player has been piling on the runs as he pushes for a return to national side and ILT20

Vriitya Aravind is participating in the ILT20 Development tournament, hoping to find a way back in the UAE team and ILT20. All images Chris Whiteoak / The National

Gulf Giants captain Vriitya Aravind bats in their ILT20 Development tournament match against Thunderbolts at the ICC Academy in Dubai

Vriitya Aravind was a regular member of the UAE team up until recently but now finds himself out of the squad

Vriitya Aravind has shown good form in the ILT20 Development tournament

Vriitya Aravind has scored half-centuries in each of the opening two matches for the Gulf Giants

Thunderbolts' Luqman Faisal bats against Gulf Giants

Gulf Giants' Zuhaib Zubair celebrates taking a wicket at the ICC Academy in Dubai

For the first four years of his cricket career, things could scarcely have gone better for Vriitya Aravind.

It all started out when he got to skip lessons at school at Kings Al Barsha in Dubai to make his international debut aged 17. After that, he routinely got to travel the world as a UAE player, dovetailed with semesters studying for a degree in the UK.

He had stints as an oversees pro in English club cricket. He played in a T20 World Cup aged 20. He was player of the tournament in the tournament that got the UAE to that event in Australia in 2022. And he was their leading run-scorer in the one-day international series - Cricket World Cup League 2 - that they play in, too.

All was going so swimmingly, but then came the blip. Currently, he finds himself on the outside of the UAE team looking in.

Having been dropped from the XI at various points in Nepal last year then against Scotland and Canada earlier this, he was left out of the squad entirely for their most recent series in Namibia. He is also – as yet – without a contract to play in the next season of the DP World International League T20.

And he does not even have the escape of his studies anymore. He finished university in Loughborough in the summer, having graduated in criminology and psychology. It meant his family got to travel to watch him all dressed up in a gown and mortar board rather than batting pads or wicketkeeping gloves.

“It was a different experience for me because at school I didn’t have graduation as it was Covid,” Aravind said.

“I never had the experience of actually graduating, so this was really good. [But] I miss it a lot, especially over the past few weeks when I haven’t been training much, and was just at home the whole time.

“I haven’t had that break over the past four years. Every time I had a break from cricket I was heading back to university, so was always surrounded by people.

“Being alone in my room just watching cricket I was thinking, 'I just want to go back, maybe I should do a master’s degree'.”

For now, though, all thoughts about more studies or even a career away from cricket are distant ones, barely considered. He says he is “all in on cricket” for at least two years to see where it takes him, and will then assess his options.

Omission from his first series post graduation was a jolt. Even if his previous feats for the national team were not enough, he felt he had proven himself worthy of a place on tour in Namibia with runs for the UAE 'A' team in Oman and then in Windhoek, before the senior team arrived. And yet he was overlooked.

“It was really tough, I’m not going to sugar coat it and say it hasn’t been,” he said of his absence from the side.

“It came as a shock to me. But I am pretty headstrong and I think I have managed myself pretty well. I didn’t want it to impact my friends. I still want to see the UAE do well because my friends are playing in the team.

“I am supporting the team whatever happens, but I am waiting for my chance to come again. It is not in my hands and I can only control the controllables. That is to score runs, take catches, and win games for my team. I try to do all three things and I’m sure hopefully my time will come and I’ll be ready.”

The fact he studied psychology might have helped him through the first major challenge of his career to date.

“I’m taking it as fuel to my fire when I am outside training, but I think I’m at my best when I’m at the wicket and I just see the ball and react to it instinctively,” he said.

“Once I start putting all the thoughts in my head like, ‘Oh, I’m not in the team, I need to score runs,’ that is when I put more external pressure on myself.”

He clearly hasn’t lost the knack for run-scoring. He scored half-centuries in each of the opening two matches for the Gulf Giants side in the ILT20 Development tournament at the ICC Academy. The competition is the platform for aspiring players to advertise their merits to the six franchises for the main event.

Aravind is without a side for the third season of the UAE’s T20 franchise league. The ILT20 has been another source of frustration for him: he has been contracted for both seasons so far, but has only played one game.

Again, he is sanguine about it, reasoning that chances are likely to be scarce when you are competing for places with some of the leading players in the world game.

“Especially being one of the most capped players and being involved for a whole tournament, I would expect to play more games, but I was with two very strong teams,” he said.

“I get that. At MI [Emirates, in season one], I was with Nicholas Pooran who is one of the very best wicketkeeper-batsmen, and at Delhi [Capitals, last season], Sam Billings was the captain.

“I see where it comes from, but hopefully this year I am going to do as much as I can, score as many runs as I can before the ILT. I want to put myself in the best situation to push for a place in that starting XI and hopefully not just be selected but play a lot of games as well.”

Aravind feels players can be quickly forgotten if they are not playing in UAE competitions. He has had large absences from the domestic scene because of studying abroad, and he wants to remind everybody of what he has to offer.

“That is why this competition is so big, especially with everything that has happened in the past six months,” he said.

“A lot of people haven’t seen me playing a lot of cricket, although I have been playing in the UK, but that doesn’t have quite the same exposure.

“This tournament is big for me to put my name out there again and say, ‘I’m still not done, I’m still playing cricket.’ Hopefully a team picks me up.”

For all the tests of the recent past, Aravind is grateful for the opportunities cricket has already given him, and he thinks his time outside the national team will make him stronger.

“You grow as a cricketer, but more so as a person,” he said. “You have to take the downsides when they come. It is the way of life and how it is. When I was 17, I never expected to be in the UAE team. I was fast tracked into that and there had to be a blip somewhere in my career.

“It is still early days. I think this is the blip which was going to happen at some point. I wouldn’t say I’m happy it has happened now, but hopefully I can take it in a good way and move forward, and make sure I do enough so this doesn’t happen again.”