It was past 1am when a bunch of people landed up at the Netravalkars' door in Mumbai. USA had just beaten Pakistan in the 2024 T20 World Cup match in Dallas, and Naresh Netravalkar's son Saurabh had bowled the Super Over for USA minutes before.
Naresh and Nidhi, Netravalkar's younger sister, were greeted by neighbours, including some who had played cricket with Saurabh years ago. Their phones blew up with messages from friends and family the next day. A news channel crew was interviewing them in their living room come the morning. "From where they found our number, we don't understand," Nidhi says, still bemused two years later.
When people hear their not-so-common surname, they ask: "Do you know Saurabh?" "We are like, 'Yeah, he's my brother.'" Nidhi says. "And they are like, 'Oh my god, that is so crazy.' Everybody knows our surname now."
The Netravalkars are still getting used to how things played out since that night in June 2024. His mother had flown to San Francisco shortly before the World Cup to be with his pregnant wife. After USA beat Canada to win their first game, Netravalkar, on an impulse, asked the two to come to Dallas for the next match, against Pakistan. So while his father and sister watched from Mumbai, his mother and his wife were cheering him on from the stands.
"When he was not playing, he was just at home doing nothing," Nidhi says. "That's not something he had ever done in his life. He always had studying to do or something on the side. He was very low when he was stressed. That's when he started studying for GRE [a test required for admission to many post-graduate studies programmes overseas]. He just applied and got a great score, so he thought maybe this is a sign now and gave it a fair chance."
In 2015, Netravalkar left to study in the US. He continued playing cricket, in the local leagues there, and after the ICC relaxed the residency rules from seven to three years for a player to be eligible to represent an Associate team, he got his chance to play international cricket, making his ODI and T20I debuts for USA in 2019. By then he had also started working for software giant Oracle in California, so it was a techie's life from Monday to Friday and cricket on the weekends - for which he often needed to drive seven or eight hours one way for a game.
Nidhi has seen her brother transform into a disciplined and focused adult who has now also taken on the responsibilities of fatherhood. These days Netravalkar practises yoga for an hour and a half every morning and cooks regularly. He has been a vegan for the last four years.
"His life has changed quite a bit," Nidhi says. "Growing up, he was such a naughty kid. He was chaotic, always up to something or the other. But now he is completely different - fully calm and very composed. Completely opposite to what he was in the past.
"They have adapted to a vegan lifestyle, not just [in terms of] food," she says of her brother and sister-in-law's life in the US. "They have adopted a dog now, they don't wear wool or anything…
"I think that has really helped his fitness. He is into spirituality, he reads a lot. He is great at his job, he is great at home, he cooks well, he looks after his daughter."
Videos of Netravalkar playing the ukelele have gone viral on social media in the last year and a half, and Nidhi reveals he also used to play the flute in his school band. His range of interests off the field does not surprise his family. He was given to working on multiple things even when younger. While juggling studies with cricket, he developed a cricket app called CricDecode as part of a college project. "It was basically like Cricinfo. At that time there weren't enough places [online] where a local cricketer could also analyse his or her own stats," Nidhi says. "When you play a match, you come home and fill your data in that app."
Netravalkar visits his family once a year or so and has watched his father play in a tennis-ball senior citizen's cricket team at times. On one such trip he was asked to present the Player-of-the-Match award for a game in a local senior-citizens' tournament - to his father.
About 18 months after that transformative night in 2024, Nidhi and Naresh are perched on the same sofa from where they watched Netravalkar's World Cup heroics. In a few days they will watch USA play their opening game of the 2026 T20 World Cup. This time the venue is Mumbai and the opposition India. Netravalkar could well be bowling to India's captain, Suryakumar Yadav, with whom he played Under-17 cricket, and under whom he played for Mumbai.
Netravalkar's figures against India in the 2024 T20 World Cup were identical to those he got against Pakistan, but USA lost that match by seven wickets. "He got two main wickets - Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma," Naresh remembers..
The Netravalkars are clear about their expectations from the upcoming game. "The agenda is pretty simple," Nidhi says without hesitation. "We want him to do well, but we ultimately want India to win."
"India is No. 1," Naresh adds. "But at least they [USA] should play a good game. Give a good, tough fight."
They say that Netravalkar remains detached from the emotions surrounding a game between his home country and his adopted one. "He doesn't think like, 'I am playing against India or against these people. It's a match I am going to play and this is what I am going to do.' I think that's what helps him."
Like he did back in the 2024 game against India, Netravalkar will sing both national anthems before the start of the game on February 7.
Other than India, USA's group includes Pakistan, Netherlands and Namibia. The Netravalkars know that despite what the team achieved two years ago, USA are not favourites to progress to the Super Eight. In the longer run, Netravalkar has his sights set on next year's ODI World Cup, which, unlike the previous edition, will feature 14 teams, not ten. USA, along with seven other sides, will begin their qualification path with the ICC World Cup League 2. The top four from there will head to the ten-team World Cup Qualifier, and the top four from the Qualifier will go to the main event.
For years now Netravalkar's family have followed his career, tracking his performances online and on television across time zones. Come next week, they will get to show their support from their seats in the Wankhede, his home ground away from his new home.