The Father Who Sold His Home So His Son Could Play Cricket

When Mukul Choudhary walked out to bat at Eden Gardens, nobody knew what was coming— not even him

The scoreboard told a brutal story. Lucknow Super Giants needed 54 runs from the last four overs against Kolkata Knight Riders, and the only recognized batter left at the crease was a 22-year-old from a small village in Rajasthan that most cricket fans had never heard of.

Nobody in the stands gave LSG a chance.

Mukul Choudhary, gloves on and eyes steady, had other plans.

And then he did something that made 60,000 cricketing spectators forget to blink.

 What followed in those four overs was the kind of innings that makes you put your phone down and just watch. He didn’t just hit Cameron Green. He dismantled him. Kartik Tyagi? A disappearing act. Vaibhav Arora? Treated like a net bowler. Mukul swung 360 degrees—scoops, slaps over cover, thunder down the ground—until the final ball vanished into the Kolkata night. By the time the last ball was bowled, Mukul had cracked an unbeaten 54 off just 27 deliveries, and LSG had won the match.

Rishabh Pant, not a man who struggles for words, stood at the boundary rope and admitted he had none.

“I do not have words to describe— but what a fantastic effort,” Pant said. “When you believe in someone, a player can do wonders.”

LSG coach Justin Langer was more colourful about it. He said Mukul runs like Virat Kohli and chases totals like MS Dhoni.

High praise. But there’s a story behind that innings that the scoreboard couldn’t display.

A poem on a WhatsApp status

Somewhere in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, a man named Dalip Choudhary has a particular poem set as his WhatsApp status. It’s from poet Sandeep Dwivedi’s collection Rone Se Kuch Hota Hai Kya, and it roughly translates to: Nothing comes in an instant— we gathered countless storms before we learned to become a river.

When asked why he chose those lines, Dalip doesn’t hesitate.

“Kaafi sateek line hai. Hum dono baap bete ki kahaani hai,” he says quietly. This line perfectly captures the journey of my son and me.

It’s not an exaggeration.

The dream began before the boy did

Dalip Choudhary graduated in 2003, the same year he got married. He was a young man with a quiet ambition: if he ever had a son, that son would play cricket.

The next year, Mukul was born.

“From a very young age, I decided I would do everything to make him a cricketer. When so many people make it, why can’t my son?”

But dreams need money, and money was the one thing Dalip never had enough of. He spent six years preparing for the Rajasthan Administrative Service examination— a grueling, all-consuming process that many aspiring government servants spend their best years on. He couldn’t crack it. He then tried his hand at real estate. That didn’t work either.

The years passed. Mukul grew. The cricket dream didn’t fade— it just became more expensive.

Selling the Only Roof They Had

In 2016, Dalip drove his son to SBS Crickhub in Sikar, about 70 kilometres from their village of Khedaro Ki Dhani. It was the beginning of something real. Proper coaching. Proper infrastructure. The kind of place where talent could actually be shaped.

There was one problem: Dalip had no steady income, and the fees weren’t going to pay themselves.

So, he sold his house.

“I got Rs 21 lakh,” Dalip recalls. “I asked the buyer to transfer the full amount to my account, so everything was on record.”

He took that money, enrolled his son, and then started a small hotel to generate some income. He took a loan for that too.

For a while, things held together— barely, but they held. And then the loans started coming due.

The part nobody talks about

This is where most inspiration stories would skip ahead to the breakthrough. But Dalip Choudhary doesn’t skip anything.

“Yes, I failed to pay instalments on time. I even went to jail. But I never committed fraud.”

He says it without flinching. No excuses, no embellishment. Just a man who got crushed by debt trying to keep a dream alive and paid a price that most fathers never have to pay.

Around him, relatives and neighbours weren’t kind about it. They told him to his face: “Khud ki zindagi barbaad kar di, ab apne bete ko baksh de.”  You’ve ruined your own life— now at least spare your son.

“Those words,” Dalip says, “only made me more determined. They made me feel I was on the right path.”

There’s something in that which is hard to explain rationally. But anyone who has ever been told they can’t do something by the people closest to them— and felt that familiar, stubborn fire ignite in response— will understand it completely.

The night Mukul cried

Cricket is not a gentle teacher.

After LSG’s second match of the season against Sunrisers Hyderabad, Mukul had a rough evening with the bat. Rishabh Pant eventually took the team home himself, and after hitting the winning shot, he went straight to his young keeper and tried to lift him. But the damage was done.

Back at the hotel, alone, Mukul broke down.

Dalip was watching from Jhunjhunu— on a television screen, then on a video call. He could see his son’s red eyes.

“Maine pucha usse, beta ro liya?” Did you cry, son?

Mukul nodded and smiled.

“He was frustrated that he couldn’t finish the game. He kept saying the LSG management had bought him for so much money— what was the point if he couldn’t win matches for them?”

That night, Mukul made his father a promise. Next match, he said, he would make everyone proud.

The next match was at Eden Gardens against KKR.

What Rs 2.60 crore really means

When LSG picked Mukul in the IPL auction at Rs 2.60 crore— more than 13 times his base price — the first thing he told his father was that he would pay back every loan taken to get him here.

Not a celebration. Not an Instagram post. A promise about debt.

That is what cricket means in households like the Choudhary’s— not glamour and endorsements, but the weight of years, of a sold house, of a father who went to jail, of relatives who wrote you off. Arjun Tendulkar, Mukul’s LSG teammate, had quietly told anyone who would listen that this kid could hit sixes square of the wicket in ways that would leave bowlers with no answers. But Arjun knew what everyone outside the dressing room didn’t— that the talent was forged in conditions most professional cricketers have never had to face.

What the Eden Gardens innings really was

When Mukul walked out to bat that evening needing 54 off 24, it wasn’t just a chase. It was the accumulation of everything— a father’s impossible faith, a sold home, a spell in jail, years of relatives saying it would never work, a young man crying alone in a hotel room.

And then a straight six, over the bowler’s head, into the night.

Dalip Choudhary, watching from Jhunjhunu, probably didn’t say much. He didn’t need to. He had a poem for moments like this.

We gathered countless storms before we learned to become a river