Siddharth Pradhan ’27 remembers receiving his first bat and ball on his fourth birthday, then playing for hours with his dad. “I’ve never been able to let the bat go,” he says, “I’ve always wanted to bat and keep batting, and that’s been a very big part of my life so far.” Siddharth’s passion for his sport has carried him far. Cricket is not a very well-known sport in the Mitty community nor the US, yet at only 16 years old, Siddharth was selected to compete in the Men’s Under-19 USA National Championship, a pool of top players that feeds into the Under-19 World Cup squad. He was the youngest player in the tournament. At the Thanksgiving tournament shortly after, he was awarded Best Batsman, scoring 130 runs.
Cricket is a bat and ball sport, similar in some ways to baseball. It consists of runs scored by hitting balls between wickets while trying to get the opponents’ batter out. As a batter, Siddharth is responsible for scoring runs and keeping his wicket standing.
His father and uncle, both cricket players themselves, have always offered guidance. “Everyone’s been really supportive of me,” Siddharth says. “They’ve always helped me whenever times have gotten a bit tough.”
In America, where cricket is not mainstream, Siddharth has always competed against older players, facing 16-year-olds when he was 12 and now going up against 19 and 20-year-olds. The age gap has never stopped him. He has learned to give himself a “mental backing” to trust that he belongs in whatever level he is competing at. Such emotional reinforcement carried him through one of his proudest moments. In a 2024 tournament final, his team was far behind in runs with victory seemingly out of reach. “When I went out to bat, we almost were in a game that, ‘Oh, there’s no way we can win this from here,’” he recalls. “But I made myself almost believe that if I bat till the end of the game, we can win. So that’s what I did. And we ended up winning that game. That’s been one of my biggest moments and my favorite cricket memories for sure.”
But the path to the national stage wasn’t smooth. In March 2025, Siddharth faced a setback at a Bay Area Under 19 competition when he was placed on the B team instead of the A team. “I felt really devastated because I put in all the hard work, put in all the hours, and I just wasn’t getting the results while watching my friends and my peers go ahead.” Rather than give up, he refined his approach, focusing training on his weaker areas instead of practicing longer. When he faced the A team in July, he scored 125 runs against them. “I proved that I should be on your guys’ team,” he remembers thinking. That performance earned him a spot at Under-19 Nationals.
Cricket has even shaped Siddharth’s perspective on life, teaching him valuable lessons about opportunity. “As a batsman, all you get is one chance. In cricket, one strike and you’re out. That’s really made me value the opportunities I get, and making sure I live those opportunities to their fullest.”
His father and his coach, Jagdish Arun Kumar, have helped him hone the mental side of his game. To stay composed under pressure, Siddharth thinks of each ball as a wave which crashes on the shore, then pulls back into the ocean. “That ball is gone, done and dusted. Nothing you can change. Now you have to think about the next ball,” he describes.
Pursuing cricket outside Mitty’s athletics program has made him self-motivated and appreciative of every opportunity to compete, even when that means training from 10 to 11 PM after finishing all of his homework. He also volunteers at California Cricket Academy, where he first learned the game, coaching younger players and passing down what he has learned.
Siddharth is motivated by a singular goal: the 2028 Under-19 World Cup. “I saw the players that played in the 2026 World Cup,” he recalled. “I aspire to be just like them or even better. Maybe, hopefully, winning the World Cup for the USA. Definitely not out of question.”