Sangha set sights on sky blue debut

On a sunny, yet chilly, day in Sydney outside the SCG nets, Jason Sangha is fielding questions from a reporter as his eyes wander off and lock on veteran Blues batsman Moises Henriques in the distant turf practice wickets.

As the reporter waffles on, Sangha is studying Henriques; how the former skipper is shaping up to each delivery, how he plays it, resets himself and goes again.

While he’s watching, the youngster hopes to obtain any clue or cue or hidden secret that he could apply to his own game.

"I observe a lot more than talk," Sangha tells cricket.com.au as he snaps out of his trance. "I'm a little bit quieter around the group and I like watching how the older guys go about their innings.

"One thing is watching them play but I really break down how they go about their innings.

"Those guys, like Moises, 'Nev' (captain Peter Nevill), 'KP' (Kurtis Patterson), they've all got their plan when they go out to bat and in the nets.

"It's been really beneficial to watch them bat."

Sangha is only days away from turning 19, but hearing him talk about his game, his flaws, how he wants to improve and the confronting lessons he's already endured, you could be mistaken for thinking he was as experienced and travelled as the senior peers he looks up to.

To quickly summarise his career to date, Sangha is a right-handed batsman whose batting style reminds one of India legend VVS Laxman. In April 2016, he became the youngest player ever to be given a NSW rookie contract at just 16. Eighteen months later he re-wrote the record books again when he became the youngest Australian to score a first-class century against England, making 133 for Cricket Australia XI in Townsville. He captained Australia to the Under-19 World Cup final earlier this year in New Zealand.

And that's without mentioning the mountain of runs he's scored in junior competitions and representative teams as he's climbed the ranks of NSW cricket.

Fresh out of school, cricket is now the No.1 focus for Sangha, and he's already laid out his goals for the summer.

"I'd love to go play the JLT Cup for the Blues, have a crack this year in the BBL and make my Shield debut," he said.

"It was nice to get that exposure to play first-class cricket against England.

"That is something I'm extremely proud of and extremely grateful for as well.

"Hopefully to get that opportunity again, I think I'm actually ready for it this year.

"Last year I felt like my game needed a fair bit of improvement.

"If I'm being brutally honest I didn't feel I was ready for it.

"But this year, with the good pre-season I've had up with the NPS (National Performance Squad, the group of talented youngsters who train in Brisbane at Cricket Australia's high performance centre), being with the Blues and my first year out of school as well to take cricket really seriously, I feel like I'm in a pretty good place."

Yet to represent his state at domestic level and with only a pair of List A games with the Cricket Australia XI under his belt, Sangha has already experienced the harsh realities of life as a professional cricketer.

Coming off the high of the Under-19 World Cup, he struggled in his return to 2nd XI cricket for ACT in the Toyota Futures League.

That form slump perhaps cost him a JLT Sheffield Shield debut late last season. His Under-19 teammate and fellow Blues rookie Param Uppal was rewarded for a fine hundred against South Australia and as a result was handed a maiden Shield match for NSW.

It was a harsh reminder how fickle cricket can be, but with an attitude that belies his age, Sangha says the experience was what he needed to progress to the next level.

"A cricketer's career never goes up the whole way," Sangha said. "There's always going to be ups and downs. There's always going to be a wavy line.

"I think that definitely woke me up; the high playing in the World Cup final then coming back and really struggling with the Dukes ball in the back end of 2nd XI cricket.

"The best players are the ones that can adapt from white-ball cricket straight into red-ball cricket and I didn't do that well at all.

"For me, I realised I had so much more left to improve and that's something I've been trying to work on in the nets and training sessions, to adapt.

"At the Blues, we've done T20 Tuesdays every week. Obviously, there's a massive Shield focus but then also having those T20 sessions mid-week allows you to keep adapting to all forms of the game.

"It definitely woke me up and made me realise that being a professional cricketer is not easy.

"It's more the mental approach with how you deal with that stuff and I reckon I dealt with it pretty poorly if I'm being honest.

"I had to go through that to understand it and see the light at the end of the tunnel.

"If I want to have a long career in cricket I've got to have a good mental space about that type of stuff."

With the JLT Cup less than three weeks away, Sangha will be doing everything he can to convince new coach Phil Jaques he's worthy of a spot in the one-day tournament.

The Blues squad travels to Brisbane on Saturday for pre-season matches against other state sides who have headed north to take advantage of the facilities and warmer climes at the Bupa National Cricket Centre.

But you can tell, as Sangha forensically analyses his peers at practice, he is already thinking about his next net session and how's going to get better.

"I've played so much white-ball cricket with underage championships and the exposure of playing some T20 stuff, I think my red-ball game is something I really needed to work on," he said when asked what he's been focusing on this winter.

"I've been trying to fine-tune my technique and learning how to construct an innings.

"The best players are the ones that can adapt from playing the red-ball game straight into a T20 and do it successfully as well as playing in all parts of the world.

"The first person who comes to mind is Virat Kohli or Steve Smith, who do it easily.

"For me, it's just about learning how to score runs, knowing my game, my approach to my innings and taking those fundamentals and putting it into each format."