Fame, perhaps, is just a photo shoot away. For the time being, though, cricketer Unmukt Chand continues to flourish in the shadow of anonymity. If Sachin Tendulkar walks down, say, a busy street in Ulan Bator, he’ll be just another face in the crowd. But for Chand and India’s junior cricket team, anonymity is closer home.

The team — which won the Under-19 World Cup in Australia last month — was in Bangalore to attend a training camp. After a day-long practice session at Chinnaswamy Stadium — located in the heart of the city’s central business district — the cricketers were walking back to their hotel. It was peak traffic hour and the roads were choked with vehicles. But no one gave the men in blue, dragging their feet with cricket kits on their back, a second look.

Team skipper Unmukt Chand was the last to reach the hotel. His usually fashionably spiked hairdo was dishevelled and he had changed into slippers. He lugged a hefty knapsack up the stairs, with a little help from the bellboy.

But the century that he hit in the World Cup final in Townsville, Australia, on August 26, is paving the way to fame. Soon, if he continues hitting tons, there will be grand receptions when he checks into hotels — with marigold garlands and a bevy of bellboys to lift his luggage.

Skipper since 2010, the World Cup was the fourth tournament that Unmukt’s teen team won, after two quadrangular titles and a shared Asia Cup trophy. With this victory run, the captain is emerging as the new pin-up boy of Indian cricket. Cricketer-turned-commentator Ian Chappell called him “the little guy who hits terrific sixes”. After lifting the World Cup trophy, the 19-year-old captain and his team returned to a rousing welcome back home.

He also returned to a controversy that hogged the headlines and prime time on television for a few days. Much to the consternation of the media and his fans, the first-year pass course student at Delhi’s St Stephen’s College was not allowed to sit for his semester examinations as he was short on attendance. Chand moved the Delhi High Court and got a stay order on the ruling. And along the way, he won lots of celebrity sympathy — with minister Kapil Sibal and captain M.S. Dhoni publicly batting for his cause. Finally, the University of Delhi relented, and Chand — a sports quota student — appeared for two out of four exams.

With a career in international cricket looking like a dream, he could have dropped a year of studies. But he says he didn’t because, for him, a college degree isn’t something that just looks good on the bio-data. “I believe academics helps sportspersons to become thinking players,” he says, adding that there should be a rule to enable sports students work around attendance issues. Under the existing rules, if you have not attended class for a requisite number of days, you are not allowed to sit for the exams. “Unless the authorities change the rules, athletes will be forced to choose between sports and studies,” stresses the cricketer, who rates his love for reading on a par with cricket. Post-exams, an elated Chand tweeted, “Pappu pass ho gaya.”

But the middle order batsman is, clearly, not your average Pappu. On the contrary, he comes across as a young man on a mission to be in the big league.

He devours self-help books. A big Robin Sharma buff, he’s currently reading Walter Doyle Staples’s Think Like a Winner. He writes a diary, where he jots down his positive and negative traits, and then tries not to repeat the negatives. And he says he doesn’t learn his cricket on the pitch alone. “I am always attentive to what senior cricketers say and learn from them,” he adds.

Cricketer Virat Kohli was his first guru. As a Ranji player for Delhi, Chand remembers he was not able to convert the 40 and 80 runs he scored into half and full centuries. Team captain Kohli figured out the problem — he advised the youngster to take his cricket one ball at a time.

On the field, Chand may only think of the ball hurtling towards him. But back in the dressing room, he puts the gyan he’s gleaned from self-help books to good use. Talking about the World Cup, Chand attributes the team’s victory to the three-C mantra it adopted — confidence, communication and controlled aggression.

In the final match against Australia, Chand scored a crucial century — with teammate Smit Patel at the other end — to enable India to lift the Cup. India was chasing a target of 226 runs and with four quick wickets down, the situation seemed sticky. “We needed one good partnership. I asked Smit to take it easy and just hang in there. We started hitting big only towards the end.”

Had Chand not become a cricketer, he would have been an engineer. “I wanted to study at the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology),” he says. In fact, till senior school, his focus was on studies — cricket came second.

Like all young middle-class Indian boys, he grew up playing colony cricket. The bylanes of Delhi’s Mayur Vihar were his playing grounds — and he broke plenty of windowpanes in the process. This carried on till a harassed neighbour asked Chand’s father to send him to a stadium if he was so bent on smashing sixes.

Bharat Chand Thakur took the counsel literally. He packed his son off to Delhi’s National Stadium to play cricket every evening. “My father realised I was good at the game,” Chand says. His parents — both schoolteachers — took another big step. They moved him to one of Delhi’s top schools — Modern School, known to be a sportsman-friendly institution — so that he could get greater exposure to the game.

Many players from the school team played state-level cricket. Suddenly, Chand found himself moving in the correct cricketing circles. “My game and confidence levels zoomed,” he says. He joined the LB Shastri Club, shared a coach with cricketer Gautam Gambhir and played a huge amount of club cricket in the capital. He went on to represent Delhi in the Under-15 and Under-16 state tournaments and became part of the Ranji squad at 17.

After a day-long practice session, Chand is casually lounging on a sofa at the hotel reception. He’s got a long evening ahead, he says, as the India A team flies to New Zealand for a month-long tour the following day. He’s giving an interview, scanning his Blackberry and complaining to the hotel manager about the erratic WiFi connection in his room — all at the same time. “Life is busy. Had my mother not taught me to be disciplined, I would have problems managing,” he says. Then he bends over to touch the sofa leg and says, “Touchwood.”

Small superstitions aside, he has a self-assured body language. Articulate — he speaks like a typical teenager, oozing confidence — Chand says he never gets butterflies before a match. The skipper counts the World Cup quarter-final against Pakistan as his most nerve wracking. India needed 17 runs to win, with one wicket in hand. Runs were coming at Chinese water-torture pace. That’s when the mental conditioning drills — that were a big part of the team’s training — kicked in. “We all kept our heads. These things happen in cricket,” says Captain Cool.

The team might have scraped into the semis, but that evening, Chand’s Blackberry Messenger status read: “I can feel the Cup in my hands.” When the cup actually arrived, the skipper became an instant celebrity. He got congratulatory calls from cricketers Yuvraj Singh and Suresh Raina. “They said they hoped to see me play with them some day,” he says.

That will have to wait for the selectors’ nod. For now, the cricketer has the New Zealand tour, Ranji Trophy, Duleep Trophy, the Challengers Cup and the Indian Premier League (IPL) lined up. It’s a lot of cricket, but Chand says he isn’t feeling bogged down. “It’s good to be busy.”

Play the game, and the money follows. It’s certainly embracing Chand. He has an IPL contract with the Delhi Daredevils and received cash awards — totalling Rs 36 lakh — from the Delhi and Uttaranchal governments (his family is originally from the hill state). And with the newfound fame, feelers for endorsements are coming in.

But the cricketer is nonchalant. He doesn’t track his finances, which, he says, is his parents’ and manager’s department. “The last thing I bought myself was a car, six months ago,” he elaborates.

With the August win, Chand’s innings look on a roll. But cricket experts warn that the Under-19 World Cup only looks good in the trophy cabinet. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the skipper has a rosy future ahead, remarked commentator Chappell after India’s victory.

Chand says he’s not thinking that far. “This is not my age to sit on laurels. I’m just focusing on playing good cricket,” he says. This time, though, he doesn’t touch wood.