USA's Saiteja wants to prove 'our team is just as good as anyone else' at T20 World Cup

USA batter Saiteja Mukkamalla was so inspired by India's 2011 World Cup triumph that he decided to pursue professional cricket when he was just seven. Around 15 years on, Saiteja is thrilled at the prospect of playing his first senior World Cup for USA in front of packed crowds in India.

Saiteja's father Nageshwara Reddy hails from Andhra Pradesh, but the family emigrated to the USA in 1997. Later in 2018, Nageshwara took a hefty pay cut and relocated to India to have his son train at VVS Laxman's cricket academy in Hyderabad. As fate would have it, the family returned to the USA after around a year and Saiteja's career took off there.

Saiteja, now 21, isn't a hard-hitting T20 batter, but has found a way to function efficiently in the top order, with a healthy strike rate of 152.87 to go with an average of 42.60 after 18 T20Is after his debut in August 2024. Though the sample size is fairly small, for a minimum of 15 T20I innings, he is one of five players, Rinku Singh one of them, with a strike rate of over 150 and average of over 40. Those numbers, though, may be seen with an asterisk next to them as it came against Associate nations. Saiteja is now eager to show that he can cut it against the top teams too in the upcoming T20 World Cup.

While the USA Cricket dysfunction seemingly disrupted the team's prep last year in the lead-up to the World Cup, their players have now been brought up to speed with recent training camps in India and Sri Lanka, the venues for the competition. Saiteja tuned up at the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) Academy in Chennai before linking up with the wider USA squad that played against Sri Lanka A in Sri Lanka.

"Playing the World Cup will be a great experience, especially for us who play cricket in the US," Saiteja told ESPNcricinfo in Chennai recently. "I started my cricket in the US and look forward to playing against some of the best players in the world. Imagine playing in front of thousands and thousands of people in India and as a team we're all very excited!

"We knew we will be playing a couple of World Cup games here in Chennai, so I'm getting some experience of the conditions and exposure to spinners beforehand on different kinds of pitches. Chennai of course is known for its spin, so this will be good for me before the World Cup."

Saiteja seems to have a reference point for dealing with Indian conditions, having also worked with former India batter Pravin Amre during a three-week batting camp in Mumbai four years ago.

"At the CSK academy, we played on red-soil surfaces, but I also have the experience of playing on black soil in Mumbai," Saiteja said. "This is actually my tenth trip to India. I come to India often because where I live in New Jersey, it gets cold for almost six or seven months of the year. So whenever I have free time, I come to India and try to get some training."

Saiteja idolises Kane Williamson and while with Texas Super Kings (TSK) at Major League Cricket, he has absorbed lessons from other great minds in the game like his franchise captain Faf du Plessis and coach Stephen Fleming.

"When you see someone like Faf, especially how he takes on the opposition and how he builds innings is something that I really want to learn from," Saiteja said. "He's obviously a world-class batsman, and just looking at that is something that I want to put into my own game.

"And coach Fleming as well, he's obviously been around for a long time, and he's one of the best there is. He's calm, and he just knows what he's doing. And I feel with that calmness, he just really helped me as well to focus on more of my own strengths and not to worry too much about the other negatives."

Saiteja has also been working closely with Albie Morkel, the former South Africa allrounder and current assistant coach at TSK, to improve his power-hitting and range. At one point, Saiteja was thought of as an ODI-style batter, but signs of T20 improvement were on display when he cracked LA Knight Riders' Andre Russell for 14 off seven balls in Oakland last year.

"In 2024, right before I made my T20 debut, when I was on the TSK [bench], coach Albie gave me a couple of suggestions with my stance and just my arms," Saiteja said. "It was just to keep me a little bit more flowing in my stance and that has helped me access the leg side a bit more. I think I used to struggle to hit leg side before, so then I felt like that change helped me open up my arms and helped me use more of the levers to get the ball farther, and that was good."

MLC's success, and that of USA at the previous T20 World Cup in 2024, when they qualified for the Super Eight stage, has raised the cricketing profile of the country.

"When I was younger, I remember we used to play only on astro [pitches] and the grass used to be as tall as my knees," Saiteja said. "There was really not much going on and I feel there was no pathway at the time. And now I think the last four or five years, USA Cricket and MLC both have done a great job at just developing the youth. From just one turf ground, we have around ten turf grounds across the country.

"The last T20 World Cup certainly put USA on the cricket map. I think a lot of people didn't understand the amount of potential that USA cricket has. We just need the right exposure, and if we keep playing against better teams, I think in the future we can become a very good opposition. And I feel, especially at platforms like the World Cup, it's best for us to showcase our ability just like how we did in the last one. I think on any given day, our team is just as good as anyone else."

While the World Cup is Saiteja's immediate focus, he also has ambitions of representing USA in LA28 and contributing to the growth of cricket in the country.

"The Olympics is a dream for every athlete and personally for me and both the USA team it's a great opportunity for all of us to be playing at that level," he said. "Hopefully something as big as that can take the game to more people. Hopefully, it's talked about more in America and I feel it's similar to a World Cup, if not even bigger."