Virat Kohli's U-19 World Cup 2008 teammate Tanmay Srivastava retires from cricket aged 30

Indian domestic cricketer and former U-19 team captain Tanmay Srivastava has announced his retirement from cricket. Srivastava, aged 30, took to Twitter to announce his decision to step down from his Ranji Trophy team and any other national commitments he had. Srivastava came into the limelight of the cricketing world as a teenager while playing the Ranji Trophy and captaining the India Men's U-19 team. His career path seemed to show much promise, but somewhere along the way, things fizzled out, and everything didn't turn out as well as he might've once hoped. 

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Tanmay Srivastava: Ex-U-19 captain announces his retirement from cricket

Tanmay Srivastava's journey through Indian cricket is one that is more common than it seems. Many potential Indian cricketers could not live up to the promise they had as they tried to make the leap from domestic cricket to international cricket. As the captain of the U-19 Indian team at the age of 16, Tanmay Srivastava guided the likes of Virat Kohli, Ravindra Jadeja and Manish Pandey in his side. Even though he lost out on the captaincy to Kohli a few years later, he remained in the side. 

At the 2008 U-19 World Cup in Malaysia, Tanmay Srivastava finished as the tournament’s leading run-scorer, having made 262 runs. His 43 off 74 balls was the highest score of the Indian innings in the final that year, pushing their total to 159. This made a world of difference as South Africa fell for 103 in just 25 overs, giving Kohli his first taste at glory on the big stage.

That World Cup performance netted Srivastava a deal with the Punjab IPL franchise for the first edition of the Indian Premier League. In 2008, Srivastava managed to make just 8 runs on 5 matches for Punjab. Despite this, he was retained for the next edition, where he made 0 runs in 2 games. 

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He was also one of the hopefuls to make the Indian team after his blazing World Cup performance, However, this also did not pan out. Srivastava's best performances came in the Ranji Trophy where he represented Uttar Pradesh, the team with which he would reach the Ranji Trophy finals three times in a row.

Tanmay Srivastava ends his career with 4,918 first-class runs from 90 games, making 10 centuries and 27 half-centuries - no small feat in a country where hundreds fight for a spot in domestic events like the Ranji Trophy. 

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Post-retirement plans 

Shrivastava, who is an employee of ONGC, has said that he has no immediate plans for what he do post-retirement but felt that it was unfair of him to take up a spot that could be used a younger cricketer to better their game. He has said that he will continue to play corporate tournaments for ONGC as of now and that he has bigger aspirations and newer dreams. 

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Image Credits:  Tanmay Srivastava Twitter