Suyash Mehta: ‘It takes a while to get used to being an NBA referee’
The Hindu
NBA referee Suyash Mehta, the first person of Indian origin to become an official in the world’s most prestigious league for basketball, discusses his journey
He gets to rub shoulders with some of the all time greats of the sport of basketball, and works in the top tier of the game — the NBA; but Suyash Mehta has something unique that he can lay claim to. Born to immigrant parents in the US, Suyash is the first person of Indian descent to become an NBA referee. “My parents came to America in the ‘80s and my father pursued a career in medicine. My mother was a botanist but later raised four kids, she had her hands full. Our whole upbringing was based on our parents educating us about Indian values; our first language was Hindi and then we ended up learning English,” he says, over a Zoom call from the US. Suyash was a medical student, but pursued refereeing part-time. However, when there was an opportunity to take it up full-time, he grabbed it with both hands. Excerpts from an interview:He has worn India’s blues, albeit in an Under-19 World Cup, with K.L. Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Harshal Patel and Jaydev Unadkat as his teammates. He has proudly adorned the Lion’s Crest — the famed Mumbai cricket logo — in all three formats. He has played with Yuvraj Singh, against Virat Kohli and Rahul Dravid and has the likes of Rahul and Joe Root in his illustrious list of dismissals. He is also a software developer for an IT giant, based in California. Virtually every middle-class Indian over the last three decades at some stage dreams of being either a cricketer or an IT professional. Saurabh Netravalkar has been combining two dreams, even after relocating to USA to pursue academics at the prestigious Cornell University in 2015.
Unlike most of the Olympic-bound athletes, who opt to train abroad before the big event, boxer Amit Panghal prefers training in home conditions prior to Paris 2024. A former World championships silver medallist and a World No. 1, Panghal won the 51kg quota place in the only chance he got. He wants to follow his own plans to script success in Paris.
The other men’s semifinal Friday is Norway’s Casper Ruud, twice the runner-up in Paris — to Rafael Nadal in 2022 and to Novak Djokovic in 2023 — against Germany’s Alexander Zverev, a finalist at the 2020 U.S. Open, an Olympic gold medalist and into the final four at Roland Garros for the fourth consecutive year.