Cooked in India, reborn in Hong Kong: Anshuman Rath battles his way from tears to triumph

When Anshuman Rath returned to Hong Kong in early 2023, he was "cooked." He contemplated a career in insurance, finance or real estate, instead of trying to return to a team he'd captained as a teenager. At 25, a promising cricket career was at the crossroads.

Two years of playing for Odisha in India's domestic circuit had drained him mentally, emotionally, even physically. He was 20 kilos heavier, nursing injuries, and battling a deep sense of disillusionment. The game he loved as a teenager felt like a burden.

"I'm someone who enjoys cricket because of the camaraderie, the team environment. In Odisha, I just wasn't feeling it," Rath, back as Hong Kong's batting lynchpin, tells ESPNcricinfo in Dubai ahead of the Asia Cup. "I was questioning myself, doubting every decision I'd made."

Rath felt stifled by the culture, the regimentation, the senior-junior divide in Odisha. Youngsters would be berated publicly, something Rath, who had grown up in cosmopolitan Hong Kong, struggled to reconcile with.

"I remember once being made fun of for eating rice and dal with a spoon," he recalls. "It sounds silly, but when you have no one to talk to, no support system, those things hit you hard. No matter what level you play, if you're not enjoying it or you're not in the right frame of mind you're wasting your time.

"So I called my dad, literally almost in tears being like, 'what am I doing here? I just don't want to do it.' I had played two years of it, but didn't have anything more to give.

"When I felt it the most, I remember getting injured during the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy [2022-23, India's domestic T20 competition]. Wasim Jaffer was our head coach. He sent me to get a scan in Mumbai. So I went there and started punching myself in the collarbone to make it worse so that I wouldn't have to play more. It was that bad.

"For me, I'm a massive team person. So I love playing with my teammates. That's why I don't think of it as work. Whereas when I was in Odisha, the environment wasn't like that. The coaches had their favourites. I actually played the rest of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy with that injury. It was just an awful time."

It was around this time that Rath turned to food for comfort.

"When you're in that state of mind, there are very few things that make you happy," he says. 'For me, it was food - eating just to survive, to feel something. It was the only enjoyment I was getting. I piled on 20 kilos. I completely lost the plot."

This wasn't how it was supposed to be.

Rath's journey had already taken him through the heartbreak of visa denials in England - which ended a near-signed deal with Middlesex - and a tough, lonely stint in Christchurch as he tried to qualify to play for New Zealand in late 2018.

Canterbury Cricket had sponsored Rath a three-year work-to-residence visa for him to potentially qualify for New Zealand. He'd put his studies on hold for it initially, but found the move harder than he'd thought.

"Because I was 21 at the time and the whole Middlesex thing had happened, I hadn't really processed the whole thing yet," he says. "The trauma of going through the Middlesex visa stuff, the ECB visa stuff. I didn't really want to do more qualifying.

"To spend another three years, it was kind of daunting. Obviously, they're lovely people in New Zealand. But, it was the other side of the world. You know, you wake up in the morning, you don't know who to call. Because all the people you know are asleep."

Rath eventually didn't sign the document to pledge himself to New Zealand via the qualifying path. He chose something that was slightly more easier in terms of rules. At the time, though, he didn't know that too would be quite be, what he says, was an "un-ending nightmare."

"So, then I made the decision. I had an Indian passport, so I thought I might as well use it, so we decided to test the Indian waters," Rath continues. "I had to start from scratch but I was fine. As long as I didn't have all these three-year qualifying rules again. I knew I had to serve a one-year cooling off period, and I was fine with that."

After trying with a few teams, Rath identified Vidarbha as his home in India. And for a while, it seemed like the perfect environment. He was received warmly and he thrived in the club cricket ecosystem alongside the likes of Jitesh Sharma, Faiz Fazal, Atharva Taide, and Harsh Dubey among others.

"It reminded me of the systems in the UK. Structured, professional, with a clear pathway to the senior team. I loved it," he remembers.

But administrative roadblocks derailed his plans. A registration issue with the BCCI - according to the Vidarbha Cricket Association (VCA) - meant he couldn't be picked despite completing his cooling-off period. Rath later checked with a lawyer contact in the BCCI if there were issues with his paperwork. He was told there wasn't any, and he was green lit.

"That was a real sinking moment," he says. "I don't like politics. I've always believed in letting my bat do the talking. To be told I couldn't play despite doing everything right was hard to take."

What followed was a downward spiral that eventually took him to Odisha, his home state, where his grandparents live. It should have felt like a homecoming. Instead, those three years drained him.

"No matter what level you play, if you're not enjoying it, you're wasting your time," he says. "I was just going through the motions."

On a cold January morning in 2023, when Odisha were put in to bat on a green top in nondescript Nadaun (in Himachal Pradesh) in a Ranji Trophy fixture, he finally took a decision that had been simmering underneath for months.

"I was like I don't even want to play on a flat track, let alone here," Rath says. "I walked up to the coach on day two and told him, 'please book me a flight back to Bhubaneswar.' I knew that was that. I spoke to the association people, they said, you're doing fine, stay back. But I was like no, that was it."

For Rath, a prodigiously talented left-hander who once nearly helped Hong Kong pull off a giant ODI upset against India at the Asia Cup in 2018, it was the closest he'd ever come to turning his back on the game.

When Rath returned to Hong Kong in February 2023, he was ready to walk away from cricket entirely.

"I told my dad I was never touching a bat again," he says. "I was ready to try my hand at the corporate world - finance, real estate, insurance, whatever. Just something different."

That's when Mark Farmer, Cricket Hong Kong's High Performance manager who'd known Rath from his younger days, stepped in.

"He sat me down and said, 'Let us know what you need. We're happy to give you a contract right now.' I hadn't even played," Rath says. "And they were willing to give me that love, that faith. It was the first time I'd felt something like that in five or six years. I almost teared up."

Rath eased his way back, found his rhythm, his fitness, and most importantly, his love for the game. "I wake up in Hong Kong now, have meals with my family, and enjoy the vibe of the city. There's a sense of freedom I hadn't felt in so long. I laugh more on the field. I banter with teammates. I enjoy touring again. I'm just grateful to be playing."

For Rath, who once captained his country at 20 and chased professional cricket across three continents only to nearly give it all up, his return to Hong Kong has been a second coming.

"This isn't going to last forever," Rath says. "So every time I walk on the field now, I'm smiling, I'm laughing. And I think that shows in my cricket too."