At a time when the 2024 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup was in full bloom in the United States and West Indies, a high-stakes cricket match was taking place in a little corner of Rome, Italy.
The long 2026 T20 World Cup qualification process for the minnows of cricket had already begun while the best in the world competed for the grand trophy. And on June 16, hosts Italy were to take on an unexpected opponent in the final of the Sub Regional European Qualifier – Romania.
The visitors were no match for the Italians – a team filled with professional cricketers that included former Australia international Joe Burns. What was unexpected was the sudden rise of the Romanians. From cricketing backwaters to bonafide challengers.
Remarkably, the Romanian team is filled with a rag-tag bunch of amateur players, a majority of whom are expats from the subcontinent. The team has IT professionals, delivery agents, financial managers and even a dentist, who spend their evenings donning the yellow Romania jersey at practice sessions.
Central to the rise though is their “coach sahab” Hitshu Bachani.
The 41-year-old from Mumbai had played two seasons of first-class cricket for Baroda in the Ranji Trophy, and was a part of the team – which included the likes of former India players Jacob Martin, Nayan Mongia, Irfan Pathan and Zaheer Khan – that won the 2000-01 title. But Bachani did not have a long playing career, having played only four first class matches.
“I played in the Under-23 Mumbai team, but never really got to play first class cricket [consistently],” Bachani said to Scroll. “I never really had the guts to play at that level. I failed so much as a player, it was easy for me to become a coach and tell people what not to do. I left playing cricket very early.”
By 2014, he got an opportunity to work in Brisbane, Australia as a coach and had also been called in by Cricket Australia to help prepare the national women’s team for a tour to India.
Having been privy to the professional and competitive setup in India and Australia, Bachani travelled to Romania in February 2022 to coach the Cluj Cricket Club. Soon, the federation asked him to coach the national team.
“I went there and realised they were in absolute chaos,” he said. “The nets were set up wrong, there was no priority on fitness, no such thing as a warm-up, no fielding practice, sometimes people would have a smoke in the tent.”
Bachani’s first order of business was bringing some semblance of discipline to the team. And the results started to show soon enough. In May 2022, just a few months since his appointment, the Romanian team was to play in the six-nation Valetta Cup in Malta.
But just as he had been shocked by the “chaos” that prevailed in the team, there was another surprise in store for him in their first travel abroad.
At a time when the Covid-19 pandemic’s aftereffects were still rampant, travel costs had shot up and the national federation could only afford flight tickets on a budget airline that did not provide the entire team with baggage allowance. This was another step away from the professional cricket life Bachani had known in India and Australia.
But the players from Romania seemed nonchalant about it. They had already found their solution.
“We decided that the bowlers should not carry their personal kits,” explained the current team captain Vasu Saini to this publication.
“In total we probably had allowance for six or seven suitcases, so we carried around five or six sets of pads and gloves and other equipment and shared it around.”
Underdogs on the regional circuit, Romania lost their first two matches, but suddenly won three on the trot to make it to the final.
Saini starred with the bat in the final, scoring an unbeaten 60 that helped his team beat Malta by nine runs.
The baggage trouble simply increased on the way home because of the trophy.
“We carried it in our hands,” Saini said. “We wanted to show off a bit too. Naturally, people asked us about it, and some people in the security check did not know what cricket was.”
From Saharanpur to Moara Vlasiei
Saini, 34, was born and raised in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. He played cricket at a junior district level, but all associations with the game stopped when he failed in his Class 9 examinations.
It was only after he graduated from college and started working that he got back to playing cricket, in corporate tournaments. His work as a finance manager is what took him to Cluj for the first time in 2012, which is where he would meet his future wife, Alexandra.
After getting married, he moved to Romania and started playing cricket there in 2018. It was nothing like the competitive nature of cricket he had experienced in India.
“We treated it as a pastime,” he said. “We just tried to enjoy the company of each other and have fun. There was no seriousness of playing, but all that changed when coach sahab came in.”
In Romania, the national league features 10 teams, scattered across Cluj, Timisoara and Bucharest. The only stadium in the country is in Moara Vlasiei, 30 km from the Bucharest city centre.
Moara Vlasiei is a scenic ground, nestled between a village and a forest just north of Bucharest. The venue had become a home for the expats in Romania, who enjoyed playing the sport more popular in their home nations. But with Bachani coming on board, the mindset changed.
“It became simple, and we realised that if we cannot win outside the field, we cannot win on it,” Saini said.
“There is a seriousness now that has come in the past few years. We want to improve ourselves and we want to improve our rankings.”
Modified measures
Bachani realised very early that he could not treat the players like professionals – because they were not.
The Romanian federation did provide players a stipend, but it is not enough to make a career out of it and players needed to have day jobs.
“Since they all had different occupations, it was not always possible for them to be free at the same time,” explained Bachani.
“I can’t do an Australian system here and state a practice time and expect everyone to be there. The players want to be on time, but they just cannot because they have jobs. And then when we had to go to Bucharest [Moara Vlasiei] to train or for matches, we had to rely on the few who had cars, so we had to work to that particular person’s schedule.”
On the occasions where the players with vehicles are not available, Bachani explained that the players would assemble at a park and practice their fitness drills or fielding on a basketball court.
“People would come and ask us what we’re playing,” Bachani said. “Some would be amused, but they would try to help by passing the balls back to us.”
The camps however, are only for the players who can make it to Bucharest. The rest, based in Cluj or Timisoara would assemble and train among themselves using a blueprint Bachani set for them.
Looking out for each other
With all the short-comings that come with the sport not being truly professional, the players look out for each other in whatever way possible to ensure everyone gets to train.
Saini cites the example of Aryan Hussain, a native of Bangladesh, who works as a delivery driver in Timisoara.
“We had a camp in his city and for some reason he wasn’t getting time off from work,” said Saini, who resigned from his job in January and is now a scorer for the European Cricket Network.
“So what he did was, at the time the practice was to happen, he took a delivery order near the venue. We kept his bat and pads ready. He made the delivery, came to the ground, batted for 15 minutes, and then left back for work. We packed his equipment for him.”
The camaraderie among the players has even extended to their families.
All club matches take place in Bucharest on the weekends – which is when players get leave from their work. But that means players from Timisoara and Cluj have to travel away from home.
“What happens then is that the teammates and their families who are in Bucharest, they bring food for us – biryani, rajma-chawal, chai…” Saini said. “They make sure we don’t have to spend on food. They bring it for us. It’s like a nice family picnic, with some cricket matches involved. That’s the beauty of Romanian cricket.”
Though the players hail from countries with rich cricketing heritage, Romanian cricket is still in its nascent stage. The players do not get leave from work to play international matches, and so spend their allotted 25-odd days of leave solely for cricket.
“It has reached a point where many of them have not visited home for years,” said Bachani. “Whatever leave they get, they use it to play club matches. All they get out of it is the joy of playing, that’s how passionate they are.”
Saini mentioned that the sport is also a way for the players to stay mentally healthy. Coming from the sunny subcontinent, the unforgiving winter of Romania – nestled between the vast Transylvanian forest and the Carpathian mountains – can get lonely with sunset coming in as early as 4 pm.
“It can get depressing,” Saini said. “So we make it a point to meet on the weekends. Just for some coffee, if not to train together.”
The motley bunch of players – who treasure a cricket bat donated by former India player and current Kolkata Knight Riders assistant coach Abhishek Nayar – have taken a little piece of their home and brought it to their adopted country.
They once hoped to wear the shades of blue of India and Sri Lanka, the green of Bangladesh and Pakistan, but now revel in wearing the yellow of Romania.
Bachani explained how the players cried when the national anthem was played when Cluj reached the European Champions League final earlier this year. In June, they defied the odds to reach the final in the regional World Cup qualifiers.
As a national team, they have started to raise eyebrows in their region.