New Zealand had their share of ups and downs in the ongoing ODI World Cup in India, but have made it to the semifinals of the tournament. They will face the hosts at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on November 15 in a repeat of the semifinal face-off four years ago, when the Kiwis beat India by 18 runs.
There are several interesting match-ups this time around, but the one to watch out for will be between the Indian pace duo of Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami (or trio, including Mohammed Siraj) and New Zealand opener Rachin Ravindra, the third highest run-scorer in the tournament so far. With 565 runs in nine matches, the 23-year-old has been one of the finds of this World Cup. He has scored three centuries and and two half-centuries.
Ever since the Rachin burst on to the international scene in 2021, a story has been doing the rounds that he was named after Indian legends 'Ra'hul Dravid and Sa'chin' Tendulkar.
Rachin's father denies naming him after Dravid and Sachin
Rachin Ravindra was was born in 1999 in Wellington. His father Ravi Krishnamurthy, a software engineer, had moved from Bengaluru to New Zealand in 1990 and later started the Hutt Hawks Club that arranges tours for young, aspiring cricketers to visit India for a camp every summer.
Rachin's grandparents still live in Bengaluru. He had visited them during the tournament.
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Talking to The Print, Krishnamurthy clarified that, contrary to popular belief, his son was not named after Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar.
"When Rachin was born, my wife suggested the name, and we didn't spend a lot of time discussing it," Krishnamurthy told The Print. "The name sounded good, was easy to spell, and short, so we decided to go with it. It was only some years later that we realised the name was a mix of Rahul and Sachin's names. He wasn't named with the intention to make our child a cricketer or anything of the sort."
