Securing a place in Team India has become one of the toughest challenges in modern-day cricket. Due to increasing competition for spots, even star batters like Shubman Gill, Rinku Singh, and KL Rahul did not make the T20 World Cup squad this year. Many players who made brief appearances for the team in the past are now far from being considered for any format. One such player is Nitish Rana, the former Delhi batter who currently plays for the Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League.

Rana earned his maiden India call-up due to his impressive IPL performances, joining the squad for the series against Sri Lanka in 2021. He played in both ODIs and T20Is but had forgettable performances in the three international matches.

He scored a combined total of 15 runs in two T20Is and managed only seven runs in the single fifty-over match he played against Sri Lanka. Understandably, Rana was distraught with his performances, which he revealed in an recent interview.Rana also shared that it was Rishabh Pant, his teammate at Delhi and an experienced international player, who helped pull him out of his misery.

“I was selected for the tour of Sri Lanka. It was a pretty bad series for me. There was only one guy (Rishabh Pant) in the cricket circle who called me after that. We talked for 18 minutes. That phone call changed my life. When you reach where you wanted to reach, and then you fail, that feeling is different. No one wants to fail,” Rana revealed.

“I never expected that to happen. I told myself that it would've been better if I hadn't been selected at all. Rishabh told me, 'it was your dream to wear this jersey since you picked up the bat for the first time. And you did that. You know what you did, but from here, how you see your life is up to you. You can either fall down or work and get up again. I won't tell you that, nor I will speak about this again'.”