The 31-year-old, who moved to the USA with a single-minded goal of playing international cricket at the highest level, was left heartbroken. Unmukt was not picked for the marquee tournament, which was co-hosted by the USA and the West Indies in June despite his consistent performances in T20 leagues and Minor League Cricket (MiLC). Unmukt Chand's journey began with great promise when he led India to victory in the 2012 U19 World Cup. He was touted as the next big thing in Indian cricket, but the potential failed to transform into results. Despite stint with IPL teams, Unmukt was not getting anywhere close to the senior national Indian team. Unmukt decided to retire from Indian cricket and moved to the United States in 2021 to pursue opportunities. Despite becoming eligible to represent the USA team in March,  His teammates Milind Kumar and Harmeet Singh made the cut, but Unmukt was ignored. "That wasn't an ideal situation to be in. Because personally for me, this was what I had dreamed for the last three years. Obviously, it was a big shock. And it took me time to sort of come to terms with it. It's never easy as a player, having lost all those things back home in India, to have this one goal, which had kept me going for the last three years not happening," Unmukt said, as quoted by Cricbuzz, during the ongoing Major League Cricket second season. "So it is difficult. I won't say which just happened. But it was difficult. I was not my best self for some time," he added. VERY INTERNAL BATTLE: UNMUKT Unmukt Chand seems to have managed to put behind the broken World Cup dream. The 31-year-old trained under his childhood coach in Maharashtra during the World Cup and returned to the USA for the second season of MLC. "That was a very internal battle and it's a sucker basically. It keeps sucking you inside and inside," That feeling would linger on for a day and then go away and then come back again. The reality would hit me in different phases. Once you keep going through that automatically you keep getting better. There comes a time when you're like it didn't happen, that's it. I'm not even thinking about it." Unmukt began the MLC season on a high, hitting a match-winning 68 off 45 balls for the Los Angeles Knight RIders against the Texas Super Kings. However, Unmukt fell for a five-ball duck in LAKR's second game of MLC 2024 against San Francisco Unicorns on July 7 in Dallas.