New Delhi, Sep 20 — Aman Mokhade has already worn an India ‘A’ shirt, but he believes the upcoming red-ball games against Australia ‘A,’ starting in Puducherry on September 22, will be the biggest matches of his career so far. The Nagpur-based Mokhade doesn't think he will need anyone to fire him up for putting his best foot forward.

"These games will probably be the biggest matches of my life in terms of level. For that, I don't think there is a need for motivation. It comes from within. The tricolour and the logo of BCCI is on your chest.

“So I don't think you need any motivation to get up and do well. No matter how much you work on it, it comes from within because growing up is the feeling we need as a cricketer and do good for India, right?" Mokhade told IANS in an exclusive chat.

The opener will not be short of familiar company, as his state team-mates Yash Rathod, Praful Hinge and Nachiketa Bhute will be there. "We have played together since childhood and they will also be in the India 'A 'team.

“So the atmosphere of the team is similar to what it is in Vidarbha. It’s because when we went to Sri Lanka, I was with Yash (Thakur) and Harsh (Dubey) and I didn't feel anything new. It didn't take long to get along with the other players," he added.

The Australia ‘A’ series comes after Mokhade got his first taste of India ‘A’ cricket via a tour of Sri Lanka that they A won 1-0 and made scores of 38 and 11 not out in Galle. But the tour began for Mokhade, in Bengaluru, where the squad received their match shirts before flying out to Sri Lanka.

Overcome by emotions, Mokhade wore his India ‘A’ jersey to bed that night. "It was a very good feeling. While growing up, every cricketer dreams about earning it. So, it is always a good experience for that dream to become a reality. When I got the India shirt, I went to sleep wearing it.

“The material was also soft. So, it was a very special feeling. I mean, I actually got the same feeling which MS Dhoni's character got on getting his first India jersey with his surname and number behind in that movie in 2016."

Mokhade said the tour to Sri Lanka was as much about the conversations as the cricket. "That was a very great experience. enjoyed it a lot and I got to interact with a lot of players. I got to learn a lot. It was fun. The overall experience was really good. I spoke to Ruturaj (Gaikwad) for a long time. We both are from Maharashtra and we had a connection.

“Ruturaj bhaiya is very helpful. If I have to ask him about batting, he would tell me a lot. I used to bat alongside Sai Sudarshan. He’s also an opener, just like me. While batting in nets, we talked a lot about cricket and batting. So, it was fun talking to both of them."

Adjusting took little effort, he said, with no time difference and weather much like what he had played while in Chennai and Goa, and enjoyed the local crowds that turned up for the ‘A’ games. Puducherry, though, will not be Mokhade's first encounter with an Australian side.

His earliest brush with international cricket came while being on ball boy duties in Nagpur, a role reserved for the best performers from the Under-14 camps, at a time when Nagpur hosted only one or two international games every few years. A couple of years later, he talked his way into the nets.

"Being a net bowler happened after 2-3 years. Net bowlers are people who are U19 or U23 players. As a batter, I knew I won't get the chance to be there and convinced one of the coaches that I will bowl leg-spin. At that time, the Australian team and Indian team wanted some leg-spinners to be as a net bowler.

“After convincing my coach that I would love to go and have a bowl, I just wanted to see how they – the likes of Virat Kohli and KL Rahul - prepare before a game. I just wanted to be as close to that and there was the time I went in there to have a bowl to them. It was in 2017, where Rohit Sharma scored a century and MSD was also there in that game."

Mokhade’s cricketing journey began on the playground outside his home, where the older boys of the neighbourhood saw some potential in him and suggested to his mother Manisha that he join a club. "In India, at every playground, there are hundreds of people playing cricket. So, that is how I started my cricketing journey. I used to play there and all the boys from the colony used to come and play cricket there.

“That is how I started and I used to play with senior people – the bade bhaiya log. When I used to play, they told my mom that you can try him in professional cricket because there was a cricket club near our house. My dad took me there one day in the cricket club and then that is how I started into professional cricket. It was a club called PHCA, from where I started."

At the club, under coach Nitin Kanade, Mokhade spent his first week only fielding. With the nets full of batters and few willing to bowl in the Nagpur heat, he volunteered to bowl fast, and batting time came gradually. He still enjoys bowling and has sent down overs in senior cricket.

Nobody in Mokhade's family had played sport seriously, though his father Ravindra harboured an ambition for being a professional cricketer. Most of his family members are engineers, doctors or teachers, and studies came first. Lean patches were usually met with suggestions that he return to his books.

The turning point came in his Under-16 season, when he finished as the second-highest run-getter behind Tilak Varma and later captained Vidarbha in Cooch Behar Trophy. That convinced his family that cricket could be a viable career for him, and the pressure around academics eased. Until then, homework went with him to matches and exams waited until his games were over. He still has one or two papers left to complete his postgraduate degree after completing his B.Com course.

Mokhade credits Mumbai-based coach Umesh Patwal, who was in VCA academy at that time, with first telling him, as an Under-16 player, that he could play for India. "Jwala (Singh) sir had a good impact. But before that, I worked a lot with Umesh Patwal sir in Mumbai as well. When I was under 16 that time, he saw some potential in me and that time only, he said that you can play for India and can do good there.

“Before that, I had never heard someone say that to me. If someone is saying you at that point of time, it feels like it is a very good feeling and you actually start believing in yourself ki, you can also do good at that level."

He has worked with Patwal on and off since 2016, and also leans on Jwala, who has nurtured India opener Yashasvi Jaiswal. “Jwala sir has an amazing set-up and if you go there, whatever a top level cricketer needs, he has all the facilities there. He knows what exactly is important to play at that level.

“It actually helps whenever I feel like talking cricket to anyone. I do give him a call and these two have had a very good impact. Even coaches and good people around you, who know you in and out and who are there for you whenever you need them, are actually a blessing.”

Mokhade's breakthrough domestic season last year featured making 760 runs in 11 Ranji Trophy innings at an average of 76 and scoring 814 runs in a victorious 2025/26 Vijay Hazare Trophy run for Vidarbha, including hitting five centuries to be the tournament's leading run-scorer.

But Mokhade, who had to wait for his chance to break into Vidarbha playing eleven after debuting in 2022/23, rejected the idea that anything had suddenly clicked for him and pointed to his steady returns in age-group cricket. The shift, he said, was in going bigger when it mattered the most.

"If you want to be a top-run getter, you have to score in the knockouts. Consistently, you have to. But if you score in the knockout games, you will get one more chance to play. That's how you get to the top and my coaches told me the same.

“I was working on it for a while. I was lucky enough that when the phase came, I was able to learn everything from my age group. When the phase came, I was able to play in my senior cricket. So, I'm grateful for that."

He considers himself an all-format batter, and in red-ball cricket, he said, going after the bowlers from the outset rarely works, and a batter has to respect good spells before cashing in. "It is a mixture of both. That is the beauty of red ball cricket. If you see T20s and one day, if you get the momentum, you just bat into that momentum.

“But in red ball cricket, you have to grind and then you can dominate as well. But there is a thing that it has sessions. So, your momentum will break, your focus will go down and you have to start again. So, that’s it - you have to be a mixture of everything."

In the Vidarbha dressing room, two senior players shaped him – India pacer Umesh Yadav and batter Karun Nair. "Umesh bhai was with us for a long time when I was in the senior team. So, he was there and you know the kind of a guy he is. He will be always willing to play for his team.

“He doesn't see if it is a state match or any match. If he is there, he will come to the game and he will guide everyone. He is not someone like, I have played such and such level or I will not talk to these guys or not say anything. When I was young in the team, he guided me a lot and told me that I can play and belong here. So, that is always a good influence to have.

Mokhade recalled Nair was solid but not dominant in his first season after moving from Karnataka, as he adjusted from black-soil pitches to Vidarbha's bouncier red-soil surfaces. By the next pre-season camp, the work was showing.

“When Karun Nair came, I thought that he had so many options for scoring runs. We knew he was going to do wonders in that season because he had adapted to our conditions. I saw him practicing a lot of shots which are required on the red soil wickets. So, his way of approaching batting gave me a lot of options into my batting as well because he has so many options of scoring runs."

“I thought that I should also have that much options because he made batting look so easy when he was batting in that season, when he scored a lot of runs in Ranji and Vijay Hazare games. I was lucky enough to see him from the closest corner and got to learn a lot from him too. He is also very chill. We used to spend a lot of time together even after the matches and whenever we talk about cricket, he enjoyed it a lot.”

Mokhade’s competitive streak carries over to anything he plays, including PUBG and now Call of Duty on his phone, though he keeps screen time in check during matches. With a journey built on quiet grit and self-belief, whenever Mokhade gets a chance to play in Puducherry, trust him to be ready to write the most crucial chapter of his career yet - one ball and one session at a time.

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