Engineer's XI: An XI featuring cricketers who hold an engineering degree
"The engineer has been, and is, a maker of history," said a great American engineer James Kip Finch.
With this very statement, James Kip Finch subtly summed up the prominence of an engineer by not mentioning fields in which an engineer would have made history. Probably he knew that an engineer would one day break the record of most wickets by an Indian bowler in Tests - Anil Kumble. Maybe!
Well, Anil Kumble wasn't the only one to break into the field of cricket after pursuing his majors in engineering. There were quite a few other players or should I say engineers who managed to support their passion of cricket and played the game at the international level while representing their nation.
Thus, without doing further ado, let us look at a playing XI comprised of cricketers who hold an engineering degree across all the disciplines. By the way, it wouldn't have been too hard to figure out that I am an engineer as well.
Note: The sources of the article are Wikipedia, The Hindu, and Stars Unfolded.
#1 Saeed Anwar (Pakistan)
Saeed Anwar, a legendary left-handed batsman, happens to be one of the best opening batsmen that Pakistan ever produced, especially in ODI cricket. With 8824 runs at an average of 39.22 and a strike-rate of 80.67, stands tall as third highest run-scorer for Pakistan in the 50-over format. Besides, he also hit 20 centuries and 43 fifties.
Anwar's stately are known to everyone. However, one thing that everyone might not know is that before pursuing cricket as his career Saeed was an engineer with majors in Computer System. He completed his engineering from NED (Nadirshaw Eduljee Dinshaw) University of Engineering and Technology in Karachi, Pakistan.
#2 Krishnamachari Srikkanth (India)
An electrical engineer by profession, Krishnamachari Srikkanth graduated from the College of Engineering, Guindy in Chennai. The former captain of the Indian team was one of the prolific opening batsmen for India in the 1980s where he faced the opening music with the likes of Sunil Gavaskar.
It was his attacking strokeplay that garnered a lot of attention in those days. The Tamil Nadu cricketer featured in 43 Tests and 146 ODIs for India from which he scored 2062 and 4091 runs respectively. He also had two Test centuries, 12 Test fifties, four ODI hundreds, and 27 ODI half-centuries to his name.