Riyan Parag: 'I am going to play for India, I don't care when'

Riyan Parag is confident that he will play for the Indian cricket team in the future, doesn’t matter when it comes. The 22-year-old had a superb season with the Rajasthan Royals in the recently concluded IPL 2024, where he scored 573 runs at an average of 52.09 and a strike-rate of 149.21.

“At some point, you’ll have to take me, right? So that is my belief, I’m going to play for India,” Parag said in an interview with news agency PTI. “I don’t really care when. [Even] when I was not scoring runs - I said this in an [earlier] interview as well that I am going to play for India.

“That is me believing in myself. That is not me being arrogant. That is what my plan was with my dad [former Railways and Assam player Parag Das], when I started playing cricket when I was like 10-years old. We were going to play for India regardless of anything.”

India travel to Zimbabwe after the T20 World Cup in West Indies and the USA which could be just the opportunity for Parag. India will play five T20Is in the African nation.

“Whether it’s the next tour, whether it’s a tour in six months, whether it’s a tour in one year… I don’t really put my thought behind when I should play,” Parag said. “That is the selector’s job, that is other people’s job.”

Parag had entered this season’s IPL with the fact that he had not breached 200 runs in any of the five previous editions. But his promotion from the lower-middle order to No.4, the spot in which he bats for Assam, provided the familiarity he needed to get runs.

“What you saw this year in the IPL is how I play domestic cricket,” Parag said. “I take the onus up to myself, I take the expectations, I take the burden upon myself to deliver and that is why I play the best.

“I was not doing that in the IPL. I was taking way too much pressure, keeping my expectations way too high and not doing the basic things right. That is what I figured I had to do this year; of playing at my favourite position as well, No 4. I was like, okay, ‘I do this at domestic cricket, this is the same thing I’m going to do in IPL and let’s see how it goes’. It worked out perfectly.

“I had a lot of rough seasons, more than nice ones and I feel having that constant belief in yourself, that you actually belong in this level, that you can actually do things that you [had] dreamt of, has been a constant and that will stay throughout.”

RR won eight of their first nine games in IPL 2024 before hitting a block and losing five in a row. Royals’ campaign ended in the IPL Eliminator, losing to eventual runners-up Sunrisers Hyderabad.

“I’m still dealing with it. I got back home and I was super sad,” he said. “The night after the game, it didn’t really sink in. But then the day after the match and before the final, it was tough.

“It’s tough, but then that’s how cricket goes. There are world-class sides that are playing the tournament, world-class players that are playing the tournament [and you can’t always win].”