Unmukt Chand rejuvenates his cricket career with the L.A. Knight Riders
After donning the royal blue and molten orange jersey as part of India A — the second rung of the national team ladder — Chand's performance dipped and his name eventually disappeared from the game-day roster for his home state team in Delhi
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After donning the royal blue and molten orange jersey as part of India's A — or second-best — national team, Chand struggled and eventually fell off the game-day roster for his home state team in Delhi.
After years gunning for India's main team, Chand found himself circling the fringes. His early stardom never quite translated into a stable senior career as opportunities dried up in a system overflowing with talent. By 2021, the dream was still alive, but the runway had faded and Chand decided to retire from all forms of Indian cricket.
'To let go of that feeling was something which took me time, and obviously I had to do my own catharsis. I had self-identity doubts,' Chand said.
Unmukt Chand revived his cricket career when he moved to the United States and eventually joined Major League Cricket's L.A. Knight Riders.
(Andrew Hancock/For The Times)
With the courage to start over, he unloaded his bags on American soil, where the pitch was still being laid. What the U.S. lacked in tradition, it made up for in potential, Chand said — seeing a future in a place that wasn't bound by his past.
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'We've all grown up watching American sports and the way they do sports activities, and everything around it is something very exciting,' Chand said, 'and something very different from a cricketing point of view.'
Chand and his wife, Simran Khosla, settled on relocating to Dallas. It was a leap made solely for cricket — one that left Khosla without work, stability or anything resembling certainty.
In 2019, American Cricket Enterprises, the strategic partner of USA Cricket, pledged a $1-billion investment to jumpstart a professional T20 league in the country. T20 is a condensed, fast-paced format of the game.
Read more: L.A. names coveted five provisional sports it wants to add for 2028 Olympics
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That vision materialized in 2023 with the debut of Major League Cricket, featuring six privately owned franchises each backed by global investors, including some of cricket's most iconic brands. ESPNcricinfo reported that the league will expand to eight teams in 2027, with sights set on 10 by 2031.
The goal? Hook American to a flashier style of cricket that emphasizes quick scoring, frequent momentum swings and just enough chaos to attract fans who couldn't tell a wicket from a walk-off.
'MLC is exciting — that's why it is attracting so many players — top players from around the world,' Chand said. 'The way they have done this competition is also very nice, the way teams are being made, the way the domestic and international representation is there.'
While MLC's launch was delayed to 2022 due to COVID-19, ACE had already been courting Chand as the kind of marquee talent who could lend legitimacy and hype to the U.S.'s cricketing scene.
L.A. Knight Riders batsman Unmukt Chand collects the ball during a Major League Cricket match against the Mumbai Indians New York on July 3 at Central Broward Regional Park in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
(Icon Sportswire / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
He made his American debut in August 2021 with the Silicon Valley Strikers in Minor League Cricket, a developmental league aimed at growing the sport across the U.S.
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'We were his biggest fans,' said Natwar Agarwal, owner of the Strikers. 'We always heard about him, and it was like a dream come true — Unmukt Chand is here, and there's a possibility that he can play for our team.'
You likely wouldn't have guessed that he'd just crossed nearly 8,000 miles or buried a dream that shaped his boyhood. Chand paced the league in runs per game, piling up 612 runs during 16 innings as he piloted his team to the inaugural Minor League Cricket title.
'Players like him, … showed that a good quality of cricket can happen in the U.S.,' Agarwal said. 'Still today, I get calls from players in India, Pakistan — they want to explore the opportunity where they can come here and play.'
Read more: U.S. cricket team hopes to build on surprise run at T20 World Cup
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Chand's championship summer opened doors around the world — including Australia and Bangladesh — but none felt quite like home until 2023, when he signed with Major League Cricket's Los Angeles Knight Riders, the American arm of one of cricket's most storied franchises.
The organization, owned by Bollywood icon Shah Rukh Khan, brought a built-in international fan base and marketing muscle rarely seen in American cricket.
For Chand, it was the break he'd been denied back home: a team that backed him, and a league that let him prove he still belonged at the top.
'Playing for a franchise like Knight Riders is something very special, and being in L.A. makes it big,' Chand said. 'L.A. holds a very special place — it's been a sporting capital with obviously the Lakers, and us now being a part of the same sporting ecosystem.'
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He joined the Knight Riders as a top-order batsman in a locker room stocked with international firepower and helmed by Dwayne Bravo, a West Indies legend in the T20 format.
Chand made good on it.
Unmukt Chand, of the L.A. Knight Riders, is working to earn a spot on the U.S. national cricket team.
(Andrew Hancock/For The Times)
'He's been doing really well for us over the years — he was a really great addition to our Knight Riders team,' said Ali Khan, Chand's teammate and a member of the U.S. national team. 'Always helpful and engaged in the field, and off the field as well, he's always there and helping the team.'
The Knight Riders languished at the bottom of the table in 2025, where they had the past two seasons. But Chand's 33.6 run average this year offered a rare glint in an otherwise dull stretch.
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He produced an unbeaten 86 runs off 58 balls to lift his team to one of its two victories this season, prompting Bravo to publicly endorse his star batsman for the U.S. national team.
'This guy deserves to be involved in USA cricket team! Cricket is bigger than politics, let's do right for these players. Well done!' Bravo wrote on an Instagram story.
And yet, for Chand, a U.S. call-up remains elusive.
He was left out of the 2024 T20 World Cup roster and passed over for multiple tours abroad. While Chand's domestic performances have been solid, selectors have said he has yet to shift the selection calculus in a system that might prioritize younger prospects.
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'With the USA World Cup not happening for him, it was a little disappointing for us. Not little — very, because this is what we moved here for,' Khosla said. 'But he was at it even when things were not working for him — focusing on the process, going back to the basics, working hard, practicing more.'
Though the lack of selection still stings, it's not unfamiliar for Chand.
Adversity gave him a mindset he still leans on. The U.S. snubs haven't shaken him — his focus, he says, remains to 'perform wherever I can, make the best use of my opportunities and hopefully those things will happen sooner than later.'
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Khosla, who met Chand during what she called his 'most struggling phase,' said his drive never faded — even when things felt bleak.
What kept him going? His love for the game.
'Cricket is his religion,' Khosla said. 'Cricket is something I would call his first wife. … If you take out his blood, his blood would be cricket.'
Chand, 32, speaks ambitiously about the future of American cricket — and his desire to be at the center of its development. The signs are there, he said: the growth of Major League Cricket, the influx of youth academies, the construction of stadiums and the promise of the sport being featured during the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
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He came to the U.S. chasing a reimagined version of a childhood dream. He didn't need to rediscover the game — just needed a new place to keep feeding the fire. His journey is chronicled in a documentary that was recently selected for screening by the Dallas International Film Festival.
'U.S. is my new home, and I'm going to be here only,' Chand said. 'Playing for USA, playing MLC, playing other franchises around the world is the way to go forward. And cricket has definitely been on the rise. … I look forward to the next few years in USA. It's going to be exciting.'
Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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