When Yash Punja finished his 12th grade exams at Cambridge High School in Abu Dhabi, he was faced with a choice: take up cricket, or go all in on studying to become a doctor.
The former was the dream, of course. But, having been born and brought up away from the sport’s mainstream, and having never even played representative cricket at age-group level for the UAE, his prospects seemed limited.
At the end of his school exams in 2023, he escaped the summer heat of the capital for some down time in Bangalore, and did some cricket training while he was there.
“With India being such a great place to train, I didn't want to waste the opportunity,” he said. He went along to Rahul Dravid’s academy, where Rajasthan Royals have training camps.
Coincidentally, some of the stars of that Indian Premier League side were on site at the time, the likes of Riyan Parag, Dhruv Jurel and Yashasvi Jaiswal.
“I was training on the side in one of the nets one evening in August and the RR camp was happening there as well,” Punja said.
“I just happened to be called over by one of the coaches and asked to bowl a few balls. The camp was about four days long. They were impressed with me on the first day and asked me to come for the second, third and fourth.
“On the fourth day, one of the coaches asked my dad to come and meet him. He told my dad that I show good promise, and that he'd want me to continue my cricket here in India while the Royals like look over me and try to help me progress through the year.”
Recognition like that was encouragement enough to pause the academics. “In that moment, I felt like I had manifested this happening to me,” Punja said.
“The whole year leading up to that moment was either: I'm going to play cricket for the rest of my life or I'm going to go to the UK and study to become a doctor.
“It felt like this was the moment I've been waiting for my whole life.”
Punja had been besotted by cricket since he was a small child. He had a good mentor from the start.
His brother Yodhin, seven years his senior, was an outstanding junior cricketer, and holds the record as the youngest player to have played for the UAE in men’s international cricket. He was just 16 when he opened the bowling in an ODI against Hong Kong in Dubai.
That was around the same time he was encouraging his nine-year-old brother, Yash, that the moment was right to swap their games around the house, with plastic bats and balls, for something more formal.
He joined the Zayed Cricket Academy, and showed some promise as a seam bowler. It took his brother to notice he had a greater gift for leg-spin.
“He told me to consider taking leg-spin up instead of fast-bowling; that was pretty pivotal for me in terms of how things have gone from there,” Punja said of Yodhin’s intervention.
“The googly is a pretty hard ball to bowl. The fact that it came to me naturally was something that stood out to him. He told me to consider moving into that because if you get a googly right, a leg-spinner is far easier.”
Some kind words from Rajasthan Royals were nice to hear, but were no promise of a future in the game. Still, Punja relocated to Bangalore and committed to his dream.
Now aged 19, he has been in India for two and a half years. There is a mandatory domicile period to prove he is from Bangalore before he can play state cricket for Karnataka.
That has meant much of his time has been spent training, but he did start playing competitive cricket in first division of Karnataka midway through last year.
Then, playing in the Karnataka Premier League, he excelled. He did not take fewer than two wickets in any of the matches – hauling 23 in 10 games in all – and was scouted by a raft of other IPL franchise, other than the Royals.
It earned him a place on the shortlist for the 2026 IPL auction. Coincidentally, the auction was happening back in his hometown, at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi. He was watching it broadcast live, alongside Yodhin in Bangalore.
While the spotlight fell on Cameron Green going for $2.8 million and Matheesha Pathirana fetching $2m, Punja was quietly picked up at his base rate by the Royals.
“I was nervous waiting for my name to be called up, but when it did, all the nerves just seemed to disappear,” Punja said.
“I was stuck in the moment. I froze. Maybe there were too many nerves and I just couldn't handle it. I was just staring at the screen.”
The UAE has had a player drafted to the IPL before. India-born Chirag Suri was recruited to Gujarat Lions in 2017, but did not feature in their starting XI. Now Punja will become the first UAE-born player to feature in the world’s biggest cricket league.
“I pictured it in my head for the past two years, while training in India,” he said. “Every moment was just me imagining getting picked in the IPL.
“Because I was so firm in that picture of me playing in the IPL, I'd be able to tell you with full confidence I would get picked. I just couldn’t put a date on when. When it actually happened, I feel like it was more relief than happiness.”
The presence of a UAE-born player in the IPL is all the more remarkable given his total dearth of representative cricket in the Emirates.
“I was thinking about it, the moment I moved to India,” he said. “I was thinking about whether I missed out on playing for UAE, because in India, it's like being a grain of sand in a beach.
“Sometimes it can be so overwhelming to know that there are tens of millions of other guys training hard every day to be in the position you are in.
“I was constantly thinking for the first month or two about missing out on the opportunity in UAE to move here. But I'm glad it worked out in my favour now.”
