At the start of MLC 2025, then 21-year-old MI New York fast bowler Rushil Ugarkar had a water bottle in each hand, patrolling the boundary at Oakland Coliseum. By the end of MLC 2025, he was MVP of the tournament final in his adopted Texas hometown. 

By Peter Della Penna (Twitter/X @PeterDellaPenna)
 
At the start of MLC 2025, then 21-year-old MI New York fast bowler Rushil Ugarkar had a water bottle in each hand, patrolling the boundary at Oakland Coliseum. He had played in two matches toward the end of the 2024 campaign, without taking a wicket on either occasion. During the opening week of this year’s tournament in California, the only time he took the field was to carry drinks to his more illustrious and vastly more experienced teammates. In a team loaded with overseas stars headed by captain Nicholas Pooran, wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock and T20 icon Kieron Pollard along with a fast bowling arsenal spearheaded by Trent Boult, the odds of Ugarkar becoming a central figure in a successful playoff run were long to say the least. 
 
Yet by the end of MLC 2025, the now 22-year-old Ugarkar traded the water bottle in each hand for a microphone in his right – while talking to post-match presentation TV commentator Pommie Mbangwa – and a Player of the Match Award in his left at Grand Prairie Stadium. Winners are grinners, and Ugarkar had one written all over his face as he took center stage in his adopted Texas hometown after being named the MVP of the tournament final for his title-cementing death overs spell that included the wickets of Rachin Ravindra and Washington Freedom captain Glenn Maxwell in MI New York’s five-run win to claim their second championship. 
 
It’s not often that a match top-score of 77 off 46 balls made by a winning player like de Kock finishes second-best in a vote for Player of the Match in any T20 contest, let alone a tournament final, to a bowler with figures of 2 for 32 in four overs. But the award adjudicators went beyond the raw stats and used their brains to justifiably recognize and appreciate the way that Ugarkar used his own noggin at the climactic moment of the month-long event.  
 
“Me and Nicky had quite a clear plan,” Ugarkar said in the post-match press conference, sitting side-by-side with captain Pooran, as he reflected on the seminal moment of his young career: a final-over showdown with legendary power-hitter Maxwell. “We knew the wicket was a little slow. So in my head I was like, I’m gonna go for six slower balls if I want’ and I knew Maxwell, he’s probably gonna want some pace on the ball. So that was the entire plan. So I was quite calm.”
 
Calm, and clear-headed. At a moment when others in his position might have been amped up on adrenaline trying to bowl the fastest ball of their lives, Ugarkar’s success came from slowing things down. Literally. 
 
A harbinger of things to come came in the first innings. After a wicketless rampaging Powerplay by MINY, the opening partnership was finally broken on the first ball of the eighth over when Lockie Ferguson came on to bowl to Monank Patel. Rather than challenge MLC 2025’s leading scorer with a 90 mph stock ball, he sent down a slower delivery that resulted in Monank through the shot early to produce a catch to Rachin Ravindra at extra cover. Two overs later, Tajinder Singh perished to slower-ball specialist Ian Holland, slicing to Obus Pienaar at short third. 
 
Fast forward to the chase. After going wicketless in his first two overs, Ugarkar came back in the 16^th for his third to face Ravindra, who was in the midst of a seemingly unstoppable march to victory for the Freedom. The Kiwi leftie was on 70 off 40 balls and the target had been whittled down to a very manageable 51 off 29 balls to win. 
 
“We had a plan where obviously that side [of the ground] is a little bigger,” Ugarkar said. “So we wanted to go as wide as we could and I was hoping that I could have him toe the ball rather than him middling it because he was middling quite a few. So luckily he toed it and it went straight to Nicky at cover.”
 
The pendulum swung back to Freedom in the 18^th when Ugarkar was taken off and replaced by 20-year-old South African quick Tristan Luus, who was pumped by Glenn Phillips for a pair of sixes in a 17-run over. Boult conceded 12 runs off the 19^th, a sequence which included a diving effort by Pollard coming off the long-on boundary trying to go for a catch that resulted in him needing to leave the field for injury treatment. Pooran said afterward that Ugarkar was always going to be his choice for the final over regardless, but Pollard’s absence crystallized the decision ahead of the final showdown: 12 runs to win off the final over. Maxwell only needed to win two deliveries to clinch a championship repeat, Ugarkar had to be perfect for all six. Was Ugarkar nervous? Try nerveless.
 
“I was quite calm to bowl the final over,” Ugarkar said. “I wasn’t that nervous to be honest. But I knew what the plan was so that made it a lot easier.” Pooran had joked at the start of the press conference that, “Rushil is more nervous to do this interview than to do the last over.” The unlikely 22-year-old hero for MINY confirmed as much. “It’s my first time, I don’t know how this works,” Ugarkar said. “I don’t want to say anything wrong.” But he knew how to take on Maxwell, and he sure didn’t do anything wrong in the final over. 
 
On paper, the odds were stacked against Ugarkar, at least according to the tale of the tape. In one corner was a 36-year-old multiple World Cup-winning Aussie with more than 10,000 career T20 runs to his name. In the other corner was a 22-year-old uncapped American playing his 10^th career professional T20 match, a person that nobody in Sydney nor St. Louis – his birthplace – would be able to pick out of a police lineup. 
 
Was it a modern day David vs. Goliath battle? Not quite, if only because a slingshot firing round white stones as hard as possible would have been counterproductive to Maxwell, who wanted pace on the ball. Instead, Ugarkar went with the slower ball over and over again, making Maxwell look especially foolish on the third ball of the over when the Aussie was way out in front of a leg side heave. By the time Maxwell picked out Michael Bracewell on the cow corner boundary off the fourth ball of the over, Ugarkar had conceded just two runs. 
 
“For Maxwell, I was quite clear,” Ugarkar said. “I just wanted to bowl slow. He was swinging quite hard so he just mistimed it and I got the wicket at the end.”
 
After Maxwell fell, Obus Pienaar arrived for the penultimate ball, which in reality became the ultimate title-clincher for MINY after Pienaar copied Maxwell with another too-early flail that failed. 
 
“I wanted to bowl [the final ball] from two steps, but [Pooran] said no,” Ugarkar said. “That was my plan. But yeah he just said bowl the final ball, finish it off and start celebrating.” 
 
“He asked me to touch his heart, to tell him he’s fine,” Pooran chimed in. “I was like, ‘I know you’re fine. Just embrace it. Just don’t bowl a full toss or a no ball over the shoulder and get hit for six.’” In the end, Pienaar hit an inconsequential four to end the match, one that reached the rope only because the mid-on and mid-off fielders were already too preoccupied racing toward Ugarkar to begin celebrating rather than stop the ball. 
 
“This is one of the moments that we’ll never forget in our life,” Pooran said. “This moment may not come back again and that’s why we’re going to cherish it and embrace it. What made it even more special for us is that the local players stepped up. Monank with the most runs, Rushil coming and getting a Man of the Match in the final and bowling that over. The guys stepped up. The strength of our team was our local players this year.”
 
Forget about the start of the season when he was reduced to being a waterboy for MINY. This unforgettable championship moment seemed improbable if not impossible for Ugarkar just five years earlier when he was a teenager on the outside looking in on the USA setup. 
 
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One of the first events after the Covid pandemic that was staged on the American domestic cricket scene was the 2021 USA Cricket U19 National Championships in Prairie View, Texas. Eight teams were assembled following zonal tryouts. At that time, Ugarkar was still embedded in the Karnataka cricket scene, having moved there as a child after being born in Missouri. While training at Irfan Sait’s Karnataka Institute of Cricket, Ugarkar ran into USA left-arm spinner Nosthush Kenjige, another American-born player who spent the bulk of his youth in the Karnataka system. With cricket, among many other things, temporarily suspended in the USA, Kenjige went back from his home in Dallas to resume training in Karnataka. Kenjige took notice of Ugarkar and recommended that the 17-year-old utilize his US passport to try out for the Southwest Zone – primarily made up of players from Dallas and Houston – for the upcoming USA U19 National Championship. 
 
So Ugarkar’s family bought him a ticket to go to Texas in late 2020 for the zonal trials. Not only did Ugarkar not make the Southwest team, he was also bypassed for a spot in the Colts team, which was a squad that included a healthy number of overseas based US-eligible players including South African dual-passport holder Slade van Staden – who got a brief callup as an injury replacement in the MINY squad during their title-run in 2023 – and Aman Rao, who made his Vitality Blast T20 debut for Gloucestershire in May 2025. There were 112 players who were invited to compete for spots in the USA U19 squad in the spring of 2021, but Ugarkar wasn’t one of them. 
 
“Definitely was not happy with the U19 selection, like any kid would be,” Ugarkar said on Monday afternoon after MINY’s victory celebrations cooled down and he had time to reflect more on his journey. “If I’m being very honest with you, I was working the bare minimum. It was kind of like a wakeup call.” 
 
Another opportunity came later in the summer of 2021 when the USA U19 squad was invited to come to a training camp in northern California ahead of what was expected to be the ICC U19 World Cup Qualifier, an event which ultimately wound up being canceled due to logistical problems in the time of Covid for cross-border travel affecting the participating teams. At the time, everyone still believed the tournament would go on and Ugarkar seized on an opportunity to be part of a practice squad that was set to face the USA U19s in Santa Clara. USA U19 wound up being bowled out for 44 on a day best remembered for then USA captain Saurabh Netravalkar’s merciless opening spell in which he bowled 10 straight overs, if only to see who could make the grade. Lesser well-known was the jilted teenager opening the bowling at the other end, Ugarkar. He finished the day with a few wickets including the reigning USA U19 National Championship Tournament MVP and future USA senior team batting star, Sai Mukkamalla. 
 
“I flew in from India for that, so that they could potentially reconsider,” Ugarkar said. Although a spot playing for USA U19 was rendered moot by the ICC tournament cancelation, his performance caught the eye of Silicon Valley Strikers, who used the last of their 16 draft picks to take him in the Minor League Cricket draft. But it’s no surprise that based on his draft slot, he was still buried down the depth chart in a title-winning squad behind Netravalkar, another USA left-arm pace bowler in Abhishek Paradkar as well as the highly effective swing bowler Kulvinder Singh. 
 
By 2022, Ugarkar’s family decided to fully commit themselves to the American setup and moved from Karnataka to Dallas. But switching franchises to the Dallas Mustangs, Ugarkar ran into a similar logjam for the 2023 Minor League Champions, battling for overs with Corey Anderson, Rumman Raees, Hammad Azam and Ehsan Adil. Though he played in the Mustangs victory in the 2023 tournament final over Somerset Cavaliers, Ugarkar got a “Thanks for coming” on the scorecard: did not bat, did not bowl. 
 
Rather than get frustrated and lose motivation, the opposite happened. Part of what fueled Ugarkar more than any of the cricketing snubs was a personal tragedy that made him reevaluate his ambitions in life, or as he says “fired me up more to start working super hard.” 
 
“My grandmom passed away in 2022, right after we moved to the US,” Ugarkar said. In two seasons of Minor League matches, Ugarkar only made it into the starting XI six times. “She never got to see me play, and I didn’t want that to be the case with the rest of my family members. So I took that quite hard and worked a lot.”
 
Ugarkar didn’t do it alone though. Part of that renewed sense of purpose came from renewed interactions with his eventual MINY teammate Kenjige. Having trained together at KIOC in Bangalore, Ugarkar started to work out in the gym and in the nets with Dallas-based Kenjige and USA opening batter Sushant Modani as well as Burt Cockley, the former New South Wales and Kings XI Punjab fast bowler who was based in Dallas and had been floating around the USA coaching setup on and off as a strength and conditioning and assistant coach for both the men’s and women’s teams as well as with Washington Freedom in the inaugural season of MLC in 2023 before taking up a job with Queensland Bulls in 2024. 
 
“Working with Nosh and Sushant really helped because they train hard,” Ugarkar said. “They are perfect training partners for me ever since I moved to Dallas. I don’t think twice when they call me to train. So we train almost five days a week. Their mindset helps them to work hard, which is what I’ve been trying to do as well.” 
 
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The hard work paid off this year. After sitting out the first three matches on the California leg, he was called into the lineup for the first match of the Texas leg against Freedom. Asked to partner Trent Boult with the new ball, it was a baptism by fire for Ugarkar, who saw his first ball disappear for six off the bat of Mitchell Owen before Owen hit him for two more sixes and a four in a 22-run over. Coming back at the death with the equation with 17 needed off 12 and three wickets in hand, Ugarkar lost his length badly as Mark Chapman hit a pair of full tosses for four to bring the equation under a run a ball. Ugarkar ended the over getting the wicket of Mark Adair for his maiden MLC scalp, but it was hollow with three runs left to win as Freedom clinched a win two balls later. 
 
After three matches in Texas, Ugarkar had four wickets. His best performance in that stretch came against Texas Super Kings when he dismissed Marcus Stoinis and a rampaging Donovan Ferreira to claim two expensive wickets for 47 runs. However, a tournament-ending injury to Naveen-ul-Haq meant that MINY was short of death options. A reconfigured team balance ensured Ugarkar was one of the five domestic selections. Ugarkar then went wicketless in two must-win matches in Florida against LA Knight Riders where he was arguably outbowled by Ehsan Adil, whose 20^th over against Andre Russell in the second match saved MINY’s season and helped them clinch the fourth and final playoff spot despite having a 3-7 record. 
 
Yet Ugarkar was preferred over Adil for the start of the playoffs, a choice that was vindicated by the time the final over wrapped up on Sunday night. In three playoff matches, Ugarkar took seven wickets at an average of 11.71 with a 7.34 economy rate. Not only did he claim the Player of the Match, his playoff tear culminated in him sprinting past San Francisco Unicorns and USA middle-order batter Sanjay Krishnamurthi to snatch the Rising Star U23 Player of the Tournament Award. 
 
“Honestly I’m very overwhelmed,” Ugarkar said when asked in the post-match press conference about how this match felt compared to his thanks for coming in the 2023 MiLC Final with Mustangs. “This is one of the best moments of my life for sure. Whatever game I play in, whether its final or semifinals, I just try to pitch in wherever I can whether it be bat, ball or field.”
 
He did more than just pitch in. Ugarkar was the MVP, dismissing two international superstars at the death in the biggest match of his life. The trajectory of Ugarkar’s season is reminiscent of then USA-player Hayden Walsh Jr for Barbados Tridents in the 2019 CPL. Walsh Jr. started on the Tridents bench behind preferred legspinner Sandeep Lamichanne before ending the tournament as the leading wicket-taker and Player of the Tournament, leading to a callup to the West Indies squad. 
 
“For me personally, I just love these challenges because it’s not every day you get to play against some of these international pros,” Ugarkar said. “Even sharing the dressing room with them is really special so whenever I get these opportunities, I just try to make the most of it. We play these kind of guys only once a year probably so I just wanted to make sure I’m giving my 100% every single ball, just thinking straight with good clarity and just communicating with the guys.”
 
With Pooran separating Ugarkar and Monank on the dais, the MINY captain offered a not so subtle view of what the USA captain’s next course of action should be with regards to Ugarkar, who has yet to play for USA. 
 
“Surely if he’s not in the US team now, something wrong, surely,” Pooran said. “Monank? I’ll be watching you.” 
 
Ugarkar’s finish on Sunday night for MINY might be the catalyst to start an international career for USA. It won’t just be Pooran who is watching and waiting for that to happen.