Dayapar to Dubai and beyond: Raj Limbani takes decisive action on behalf of India.
‘What are you?’ they questioned me on my first day at the club. “I am a pace bowler,” I declared.
On April 18, 2017, a little more than five and a half years ago, Raj Limbani completed his last seventh-grade test and moved 550 kilometers away to Vadodara from Dayapar, a hamlet in Kutchh with around 5,000 residents.
The older brother of Raj’s father, Manilal Patel, convinced Raj to do so. Patel, who worked for the state government of Gujarat, had moved to Vadodara earlier to support his nephew’s aspirations to play cricket.
However, neither had much knowledge of the sport or where to begin. Following Raj’s relocation to Patel’s new government quarters in the city, a family friend who had some cricketing experience that they have a look at the Motibaug Cricket Club, which is close.
Motibaug, one of the nation’s oldest cricket fields, served as the birthing ground for the Pathans and Pandyas, the two most well-known all-rounder sibling pairs from India.
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Raj Limbani takes decisive action on behalf of India
Raj had not seen much sport growing up, therefore he didn’t know much about any of it. His sole source of inspiration and practical love was art.
“I used to bowl pace in gully cricket using a tennis ball,” he said in a discussion. “I’ve known ever since that I wanted to be a fast bowler. I like posing a fast threat to the batter. I told them I was a fast bowler when I was asked what I was when I initially arrived at the club.
Motibaug served as the laboratory for Raj’s transformation into a towering, powerful speed machine between 2017 and 2021. He showed admiration for Dale Steyn and Jasprit Bumrah at some point in between.
The simplest acts are the cruelest, as Steyn would concur. Raj appears to be bowling and running in unison. Additionally, his load-up clothes are in style like jalebi with fafda, a la Bumrah. At the 135 to 140 kph he regularly hits, there are very few 18-year-olds in India who could move the ball as much as he can.
For him, out-swinging is mostly a matter of “bluff,” and he only seams the ball in the absence of assistance from the wicket.
“I had a very organic action, I hadn’t previously worked on loading-‘woading’,” Raj explained. “My mentors assisted me to grasp that part of bowling.”
In 2021, Raj had an opportunity to win the Cooch Behar and Vinoo Mankad trophies. Over three years, he claimed 52 wickets in 12 matches. Renowned graduates of Motibaug began to take notice of him as his bowling velocity increased.