Nitish Kumar Reddy’s father remarked, “Earlier, no one outside my town knew my name, but now, even in Australia, people are asking for selfies with me.”

Whenever I speak of Nitish I get tears in my eyes. As a child, he was so mischievous and the Nitish we are seeing now is totally different. At times, we ourselves doubt if it is the same person. Nitish to me is a god-given child. After praying to lord Venkataramana he was born to us. For Nitish, 2024 has been a golden year.
I will describe to you an incident when we came to Australia to meet Nitish. I hugged him and told him you have brought us this far; I am feeling proud of you and this is enough. And he replied, ‘Daddy, it is not over yet, I will show you more and more going forward’. And he showed it by scoring a 100 yesterday. I hugged him saying you have brought us this far. It is enough that I am happy. Within 24 hours, he scored a century. If you don’t keep faith in a son like this, whom else should I trust?

We know who we are and where we come from. I come from a small town; no one knows my name if I leave my small region. But today in Australia, people are asking for selfies, I cannot explain how happy and proud I am. And when I saw Sunil Gavaskar the day after my son hit that hundred, I just couldn’t control myself. I had to do proper namaskaram, touch his feet, and seek his blessings. Gavaskar is like the god of cricket. Be it Sachin Tendulkar or Gavaskar or MSK Prasad or Rahul Dravid everyone sees them like god. The moment I saw him it felt like I had seen god, so I asked for his blessings. I touched his feet and asked for the blessings; even if my son was here I would have asked him to touch his feet. When he used to hit a boundary, I used to clap and now today talking about my son, he had tears in his eyes! I broke down.

After all, what is the name of the trophy? (Border Gavaskar Trophy) When you meet such legends and if you don’t bend to touch their feet it will look like we are egoistic. Gavaskar sir said, “You have given a good boy to Indian cricket; he is playing well and has the stability to play in all the formats. And I want to see more 100s from him”

I have been often asked about my decision to quit my job and focus on Nitish’s cricket. I have to thank my wife for it. I love sports and she likes education. I told her, ‘Let’s make our daughter a doctor and let Nitish play cricket’. It was during his U14 days I still had 23 years of service left and I got transferred to Udaipur. Should I go or not, I was in a state of confusion as he had not played for the state at that point and the coaches said he was playing cricket well. Since that day when I resigned she used to take care of household chores; I would just wake up and go with my son to the ground and stay there the whole day even if I had food or not. Some days I used to be happy and some days I used to be sad. On the day he used to get 100 I was happy and on the day he went out for a duck I used to be sad. My wife is not emotional like me and used to lighten the mood with some comedy! If it had been someone else they would have complained that there are still 23 years of service left, how will our life go on. Had she said that then, I would not have been able to do what I did. She just said all is fine, don’t worry