i think they did it cause he was big sledger i think thats what my brother said cause he was in that team that put his pic on there helments and they got reported but nothing happen to them. lol not lying either
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Kumar Sarna-The next best thing.
- Thread starter Benno From Berwick
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i think they did it cause he was big sledger i think thats what my brother said cause he was in that team that put his pic on there helments and they got reported but nothing happen to them. lol not lying either
Benno From Berwick
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Sarna hardly speaks......I doubt he sledges anyone!!!
I would say they probably did it because they knew how good he was and were worried he was going to smash them all over the place. Probably also wanted a claim to fame when he is belting runs for Vic/Aus.
High Ryder
Premiership Player
Australia...
Cleavy
Hall of Famer
http://www.theage.com.au/news/sport...geoning-malaise/2008/11/07/1225561138845.html
Looks like he's heading home for opportunities.
Looks like he's heading home for opportunities.
I agree.
You've got to be kidding me.
Shades of Jelena Dokic.
Shades of Jelena Dokic.
http://manningham-leader.whereilive...smashes-228-off-65-at-croydon-twenty20-match/
Any chance of this kid getting back on track still?
Any chance of this kid getting back on track still?
Article says he is still only 21, I don't see any reason why he couldn't.
He helped them win the T20 Title so not completely useless
Where are you playing at these days?
Where are you playing at these days?
- Mar 25, 2003
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why isn't he playing in grade cricket??
the whole thing seems rather strange....
the whole thing seems rather strange....
I would suggest to you that Kumar is in the category of extremely naturally talented batsman - however this is only one component of being an elite cricketer. To make it you need very strong mental skills and a desire to work hard.
Kumar left the Vic setup through his own volition, it was a great shame that he could not handle the other components to take his talent to the elite level.
There are many players in the same category and T20 suits them ideally. But they won't make it in the longer forms of the game.
And for me personally - that's a good thing.
Kumar left the Vic setup through his own volition, it was a great shame that he could not handle the other components to take his talent to the elite level.
There are many players in the same category and T20 suits them ideally. But they won't make it in the longer forms of the game.
And for me personally - that's a good thing.
Herald Sun subscription but not code - whats the difference?What happened to Kumar Sarna?
Anyone have access to that article?
Cleavy
Hall of Famer
It was almost 20 years ago, but Warren Ayres remembers it vividly and tells the story with gusto.What happened to Kumar Sarna?
Anyone have access to that article?
Former Victorian batsman Ayres was coaching Dandenong in Premier Cricket and the club had arranged an “open day’’ for prospective young players.
One boy, small and slightly built, turned up in jeans and a yellow shirt.
He had apparently expected a talk and a tour of the pavilion and ground, not to bat or bowl.
Borrowing some gear, he took up a net at Shepley Oval.
Ayres takes up the story.
“There were heaps of nets running and somebody – it might have been (assistant coach) Craig Slocombe – tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘You better come and have a look at this’,’’ he recalls.
“And then it was just like, ‘Bloody hell’. We stood there and watched this kid bomb balls all over the joint. And we’re going, ‘What have we got here?’
“At the end of the training session I asked him where he was playing. I can’t remember which club he said he was at, but I said, ‘You won’t be playing there any more mate, you’re coming here’.’’
Within two years, the young lad was opening the batting for Dandenong’s First XI.
Two years later he had a Victorian rookie contract and was playing alongside the likes of Steve Smith, James Pattinson, Josh Hazlewood and Phil Hughes in the Australian Under 19 team.
Then, almost as quickly as he arrived in elite cricket, he was gone, leaving people to ask: hey, what happened to Kumar Sarna?
“I’ve been around. Work, study,’’ Kumar Sarna, 33, replies to the question of what he’s been up to in the past few years.
But, in between sips of green tea at a cafe at Waverley Park, not far from his home in the southeast of Melbourne, he says he has not picked up a cricket bat for five years.
Sometimes he looks up scores, especially if friends make reference to a particular player or performance.
However he doesn’t closely follow the game he played so brilliantly and stylishly.
The last time he sat down and watched it? Last December, when he went to Sydney for the wedding of former teammate Ryan Ninan.
“I remember in India, that was the only thing to do there,’’ he says. “So that’s what you did.’’
Sarna was born in New Delhi and came to Australia when he was two. The family moved back to India when he was eight and returned to Australia when he was 14.
Sarna joined the Keysborough club and came to notice with a century for the Noble Park Under 14 team in the Victorian Sub-District Cricket Association’s RM Hatch Shield in 2002-03.
Everyone at both clubs thought he was absurdly talented.
Ayres and others at Dandenong saw it at the open day.
Kumar Sarna last played Premier Cricket in 2015-16, at Kingston Hawthorn, when he hit a handy 488 runs at an average of 30.9.
A decade earlier he was in his first full season under the coaching of Ayres at Dandenong and earning glowing notices at the age of 16.
Batting with Ayres and catching the eye of Prahran’s state pair Bryce McGain and David Hussey, he made 40 against Prahran in round one.
McGain mentioned the newcomer in a match report in the local paper, saying he had a “pretty bright future’’.
The following week he cracked 28 off 32 balls against Monash Tigers at Shepley Oval, an innings memorable for a backfoot blast over cover for six.
Victorian left-arm paceman Allan Wise was the bowler. That shot, flat and fierce, has taken on almost mythical proportions at Dandy. Ayres mentions it without being asked, saying his reaction was “Oh my God’’.
In the same innings Sarna hooked former Victorian fast bowler Ian Hewitt over the fence.
He finished the season with 375 runs at 22.1.
Twelve months later he was up to 686 runs, with a maiden century, 148 against Kingston Hawthorn in a country round fixture at Shepparton.
And with future Test fast bowlers Peter Siddle and Darren Pattinson he was part of the Ayres-coached Dandenong premiership team, which defeated St Kilda at the Junction Oval.
His contribution was knocks of 27 and an important 49 not out in the second innings, shutting the door on a Saints comeback.
Tim Hooper and James Nanopoulos were also in that Dandenong side.
Nanopoulos calls Sarna “the most gifted player I’ve ever seen’’. He remembers being at the other end when Sarna cut Dirk Nannes over point for six in a match at Shepley Oval.
Hooper says Sarna used to hit the ball in different areas “just to impress himself … he opened or closed the bat face to hit square when the orthodox shot was to hit straight’’.
“A bit of genius,’’ he says of a batsman he came to regard as the Peter Pan of cricket.
Two months before the Dandenong-St Kilda grand final Victorian District/Premier Cricket great and Dandenong stalwart Brendan McArdle wrote that Sarna was on the way to becoming Victorian cricket’s “most decorated player with subcontinental connections for 20 years’’.
He said officials had been discussing the need for cricket to become more inclusive and “young Sarna, an Indian, may well be a good test case of their policy’’.
“Australian cricket culture traditionally has been one of hard-nosed competitiveness in which anyone who has differed slightly from the norm has had to battle for respect and recognition. And the success of the national team in many ways has vindicated it, yet some youngsters must have been missed along the way,’’ he said.
McArdle went on: “It is an intimidating task for any young player to leave his local club in search of higher honours, but for some of these shy lads, it is doubly difficult. Socialising often doesn’t come naturally, and this can be misinterpreted as an unwillingness to become ‘part of the group’. In the case of Kumar Sarna, a confident and outgoing personality, such things haven’t been a problem. His ability also has helped.’’
Victoria awarded Sarna, 18, a rookie contract for 2007-08.
In that same season he scored a lot of runs for the state Under 19s and was selected in Australia’s Under 19 team for the World Cup.
The tournament was staged in Malaysia.
Sarna played two matches. He opened the batting with Phil Hughes against Namibia and came in at No.3, behind Hughes and Marcus Stoinis, against Pakistan.
His next major representative game, again as a Victorian rookie, was in a state Second XI fixture against NSW in October of 2008.
He made 3 and 21, and the Vics were pasted by an innings after NSW opener Usman Khawaja’s 228.
A month later Sarna stunned his club and state officials by saying he wanted a break from cricket and was returning to India.
“I’m not motivated enough, I’m not enjoying the game enough, I’m not as motivated as I should be,” he told the Springvale Times newspaper.
There was talk he would pursue a contract in the Indian Premier League but Sarna dismissed it.
He says now that an IPL deal wasn’t in his thinking. He was more interested in getting away from the game and exploring other things.
“I have this perspective in life sometimes that if you’re not enjoying something, it is worth taking the punt … it’s worth doing something you enjoy, because it will benefit you in the long run,’’ he says.
“I just took some time off. I travelled for a year, a year-and a half. I played some cricket as well, only because there was a cricket club three houses away.’’
He spent six months in Nepal, enjoying its history and culture, and also entered a Hindu monastery in Himachal Pradesh for three months.
Sarna says he’s a spiritual person, but observes no rituals or ceremonies and his time in the monastery was not preparation towards becoming a monk.
Sarna had left for India while in the second season of his Victorian contract.
He says it was a “big deal’’ for him to be a rookie-listed player.
“It made me feel cricket was a bit more serious now, that there was more to it than just fun,’’ he says.
He insists his time in the state squad was enjoyable.
“The Victorian system was fine,’’ Sarna says.
“When you’re in a system you have to adapt to certain ways and things. Overall I think I did fine in adapting. You’re going to have issues here and there wherever you go, workplace, teams in sport.’’
Greg Shipperd was Victoria’s coach when Sarna joined the squad in 2007-08.
He calls him a rare talent, noting his “flair, moving in both directions, playing shots both sides of the wicket’’.
“Who knows, if he had persisted with his cricket he could have been a Glenn Maxwell-type in the end,’’ Shipperd says.
He says it’s “absolutely fair enough’’ Sarna chose to do other things rather than pursue cricket. High-level sport isn’t for everyone, he points out.
On at least two occasions Sarna was disciplined for being late to training. He had to sit out a pre-season match at Wesley College after a late appearance to a swimming and cycling session.
McArdle had turned up to Wesley to watch the hitout. “I’m not a swimmer and I’m not a bike rider. I’m a batsman,’’ Sarna told him.
Shipperd says it was a time when the Vics were establishing “standards of excellence’’ and “there was real intention on people sort of stumping up as professionals and he probably just wasn’t ready for that at that time’’.
Ayres wonders if Sarna was mature enough to move into a first-class cricket environment.
He also wonders if the Vics gave him enough support, making sure he understood what was required of a state-squad player and helping him reach the standards expected of him.
Shipperd responds: “Tough one in hindsight to work out. I guess when Fawad Ahmed came in he seemed to swim beautifully with the tide. People are different. Maybe with more resources, as there are right here and now versus back in those days, which wasn’t a long time ago … everyone was still learning about how far and wide to spread your tentacles with people.’’
One story that did the rounds at Dandenong involved Sarna being pushed into a pool at state training.
He says it didn’t happen. But he did have to do early-morning swimming sessions – at Frankston beach, if he remembers correctly – as punishment for being late.
“When you bring up Wesley, that was at a point when I was actually boycotted (banned) from the MCG or something for a month or maybe 15 days, when I couldn’t train or couldn’t play practice games,’’ he says.
Sarna believes he was ready for the step-up to the state squad and had sufficient support and encouragement around him.
He says he was friendly with most of the other players, and he valued every bit of advice and counsel from Shipperd.
“I was really excited about the whole thing with Victoria. I was pretty rapt. I was pretty pumped. I was doing my training, my weights, my running, I was really fit. I was enjoying it. I looked forward to training,’’ Sarna says.
Nanopoulos believes his young teammate arrived on the scene “five years too early’’, thinking he would have walked into a Big Bash League contract when it kicked off.
“The way he played and the way he went about it, he was a little bit different to the normal batsman,’’ he says.
“And these days people tend to get cuddled a bit more compared to what they did when he started.
“Being one of the first subcontinental players to play for Victoria probably would have been difficult, I guess. It’s not for me to say but I assume in this day and age, with a lot more inclusivity, he’d get the best out of what he had. He was one of the most talented players I’ve ever seen.’’
When Sarna returned to Melbourne in 2010, Bruce Waldron, whom he had known at Dandenong, coaxed him into playing for a local club called Wonga Park.
He hit the headlines for a Twenty20 innings of 228 not out off 65 balls, with 22 sixes and 17 fours.
“It was incredible to watch, just awesome,’’ Waldron fizzed after the game.
“In the end you just had to stand there and laugh, he was that good. I don’t think I’ll see anything like that again.’’
The following season Sarna returned to Premier Cricket with Kingston Hawthorn, performing usefully rather than brilliantly.
Then came more time overseas, in India, when he did briefly nose around for an IPL opening, and in the UK, where he played in the Cheshire league.
He trained with the Kolkata Knight Riders and they spoke about adding him to the squad as a local player.
Sarna, however, held only an Australian passport and he wasn’t prepared to give it up.
When he came back to Australia he studied at Swinburne University and agreed to a second stint with the Hawks.
In 2014-15, training only once a week, Sarna punched out three centuries before Christmas, going to the top of the run charts with a bullet.
It led him to talk about gaining Victorian Second XI selection or interesting a Big Bash League club. Nothing came of either hope.
Sarna played again in 2015-16 and was less prominent. It turned out to be his last season in Victorian Premier Cricket; he says he “lost a bit of interest’’.
And that was a shame, Waldron says. He retains sharp memories of that T20 double-century and says Sarna could “make a cricket bat talk’’.
“Kumar could have been anything. He had a sublime talent,’’ he says. “I got him back playing and tried to rekindle his passion but he stopped playing again after a while at Hawthorn. I wouldn’t know what he’s doing with his life now. But I hope he’s a happy chap.’’
Kumar Sarna works for a car finance company. To try to avoid what he calls “the rat race’’, he volunteers with two groups helping underprivileged children and homeless people, he goes for long walks and he writes.
“I do things that are out of context at times,’’ he says. “I do think deeply. I will give up the current for the future if I believe it is right to do.’’
His cricket career was “good while it lasted’’, he says.
He had all the shots. But he has no regrets.
“I had good fun, I met a lot of great people who I still talk to from time to time.
“It was a hobby, cricket. As a kid it was a really big deal for me. When I explored life in other areas, I realised it was just a small part of my life.’’
He prefers to look ahead rather than look back on his cricket.
“I would like to help people going through difficult times. This is a passion of mine. I even think sometimes about dropping my own career, what I do now and what I’ve done all this study for, to go into social work,’’ Sarna says.
“Just something relating to people who actually need help, maybe mentor them and get them through these tough times. I do enjoy that.’’
Ayres says he often thinks about Kumar Sarna, the kid who turned up to the Dandenong open day wearing jeans and a yellow shirt.
Last season, Ayres, coaching Dandenong for a second time and needing a top-order batsman, asked him to come back and play.
Sarna turned him down.
“I rated him as high as anybody. He was a star,’’ Ayres says.
“I think he left Victorian cricket just when he was ready to be a player. Like, a really, really good player. Who knows how far he could have gone or what he could have achieved.’’
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