HE HAS educated as a monk, labored as a bodily schooling instructor, been a gross sales supervisor at a Decathlon sports activities outlet, and sometimes taken up the job of managing trekking camps through the vacationer season.
But that’s not what Skalzang Kalyan Dorje is worked up to speak about over the telephone from his house in Leh’s Tukla village, shielding his voice from the chilly wind howling exterior.
“There was even a time when I used to run after goats as a herder. Now I’m the first person from Ladakh to play domestic cricket…I represented Jammu and Kashmir at Syed Mushtaq T20 Tournament,” says the 31-year-old allrounder.
Had it not been for the pandemic that prompted the cancellation of the 2020-2021 Ranji Trophy season — the T20 match was held as a substitute — Dorje can also have turn into the primary participant from Ladakh to turn into a First Class cricketer.
There’s a robust probability that it could nonetheless occur — J&Ok and Ladakh are two separate Union Territories now, however the Cricket Association of Ladakh (CAL) shouldn’t be but affiliated with the BCCI.
Says the J&Ok staff’s captain, Parvez Rasool: “Last season, I had travelled to Ladakh to see the talent and there were four-five good players. Dorje was one of them. We played a few practice games and he dismissed a few of our good batsmen. He’s a decent left-arm spinner, a great fielder and a handy batsman. He has potential but at the same time he has to work hard.”
Dorje sported the J&Ok colors for the primary time in January, including “professional cricketer” to the lengthy record of vocations on his bio-data. In truth, he even took up mountaineering programs in Darjeeling the place he gained a gold medal and an award for being one of the best ‘Technical Climber’. “From my childhood days, I used to run after goats at this high altitude and that gave me the foundation to do well in all these things,” he says.
Dorje’s cricketing journey began in the summertime of 1999, on the age of 10, when his uncle, a monk on the Maha Bodhi Society in Bengaluru, determined that the boy ought to be part of him.
“The World Cup was on in England, and all my seniors in the hostel were very excited about it. I didn’t know anything about cricket. Goat-herding was all I knew and loved. But then I started playing with them. We broke so many windows, we got beaten up for it, but we still played,” he says.
Just a few years later, he was despatched to Mysore to proceed his schooling — and cricketing exploits. But as soon as he graduated with a Bachelor’s diploma in Physical Education, he needed to begin incomes and took up a instructor’s place on the faculty he studied at in Mysore.
By 2011, he had stopped taking part in cricket competitively, busy shuffling between his jobs as a trekking camp supervisor through the peak season and a PE instructor within the low season.
In 2015, nevertheless, a stadium got here up in Ladakh on the web site of what was as soon as a dumping floor, and opened house for CAL to host native tournaments.
“Our tournaments were from March to May, and I’d almost always win the man of the tournament award. So I’d come home with lots of prizes. I’ve won a television, refrigerator, a washing machine… so my family was very happy,” he says.
But as Rasool watched Dorje win one other ‘man of the series’ award through the 2020 version of the match, which was shifted to September due to the pandemic, there was a novel prize within the offing — an opportunity to attend trials for J&Ok.
Today, Dorje remembers standing in the midst of the staff huddle, as Rasool handed over his cap — he bought to play a sport through the match. “The captain told me that I was the first from Ladakh to represent J&K, and that it wasn’t a small thing,” he says.
Dorje is now seeking to cement his slot within the J&Ok staff though age might not be on his facet. But then, he has already made a mark — for himself, and Ladakh.