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LEWISTOWN – When Nihar Suthar graduates from college next spring, he will already be the published author of two books.
And writing is not his major.
The 2012 graduate of Mifflin County High School is on track to receive a degree from Cornell University in applied economics and management, with concentrations in finance and strategy. He plans to pursue a career in consulting, but intends to continue writing on the side.
Suthar published his first book, “Win No Matter What: A Guide to Hyping Up Your Life,” in 2013, just a year out of high school. It’s a short book, filled with inspirational stories to help people get the most out of each day. At the time, Suthar said he hoped it would inspire people to follow their passions and use strategies in the book to make each day better.
It seems Suthar has been taking his own advice.
“I think everybody who knew me as a high school student at Mifflin County High School would remember me as a proactive person who was not scared to reach after his dreams,” Suthar said.
Nihar is the son of Arvind and Neema Suthar. “My parents are still living in Lewistown. They are originally from India, but moved to Mifflin County almost 30 years ago. Me, my older brother and my older sister were all born and raised in Mifflin County,” he said.
“I still do call Mifflin County my home. I love coming home for breaks as well. In any of the interviews I do, I always mention that I am from Lewistown, PA.”
Since graduating from high school, “I’ve been involved with writing, of course. I write all positive stories. I also recently started a radio show on iHeartRadio called Incito. It highlights one guest every week who has either overcome a great challenge or is doing something incredibly inspiring in the world.
“At school, I am the video director for Big Red Sports Network, covering and producing creative videos for a lot of the athletics around campus. I was also involved with TEDx for a while,” Suthar said.
He’s also been doing a lot of traveling since his high school days.
“I’ve been to India as a tour guide at Akshardham (the largest Hindu temple in the world), Australia where I discovered the idea for my newest book, and the United Arab Emirates to interview the Afghan cricket team. I’ve also done a lot of domestic traveling within the U.S. to promote my books and for occasional speaking engagements,” Suthar said.
Suthar’s interest in writing, his worldwide travels and his positive outlook and desire to share it led him to write his second book, “The Corridor of Uncertainty: How Cricket Mended a Torn Nation.”
The book tells the inspiring story of the underdog Afghan cricket team’s quest to rise above all obstacles for a chance at a World Cup title.
“The main moral of ‘The Corridor of Uncertainty’ is that we should look beyond stereotypes. Most of the news on Afghanistan in the modern day media is negative. However, the cricket team there is a very positive story. It rose from the worst cricket team in the world to the top-14 cricket teams in the world,” Suthar said.
Suthar was inspired to write the book while traveling in Australia.
“Cricket is huge there,” he said.
“I saw a short newspaper clipping one day in the local newspaper about a cricket match that Afghanistan’s cricket team had participated in. I was extremely surprised, because I never even knew Afghanistan had a cricket team. I was intrigued by the newspaper clipping, and decided to look further into Afghanistan’s team. I found that the team had minimal coverage, but one of the most inspiring stories ever. I decided to reach out to the team to see if they would be open to me writing a book on their journey. They instantly agreed.”
Suthar drew on his past success to continue on the path to his new book.
“I actually crowd-funded all the costs of research and traveling with the Afghan cricket team,” he said. “The platform I used to crowd-fund is called ‘Hatchfund.’ It’s a platform made specially for artists and authors. I had close to 100 people (almost all of them read my first book, ‘Win No Matter What,’ and were fans of it) donate money so this book could become a reality.
“It was too dangerous to travel directly to Afghanistan, but as a result of everybody’s donations on Hatchfund, I was able to travel to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates and meet the Afghan cricket team there. I spent a month with the cricket players there and interviewed them. This book is nonfiction, so the first-hand interviews with the cricket players were critical to getting all the content I needed for the book,” Suthar said.
The book’s title – “The Corridor of Uncertainty: How Cricket Mended a Torn Nation,” came about from cricket itself.
Suthar explained: “‘The Corridor of Uncertainty’ is a famous term that defines the area where a cricket batsman struggles most on deciding how to play a shot; he or she is faced with the dilemma of hitting the ball forward, backward, or leaving it altogether.
“If the batsman lets the ball pass, there is a possibility that it will spin inwards, touching either the stumps or his or her leg (leg before wicket), resulting in an out.
“If, on the other hand, the batsman plays the ball, there is also a chance that the ball will spin outwards, leading to a mishit off the edge of his or her cricket bat that is easily caught.
“However, I took that term and reinterpreted it to mean more than just a tricky area for a batsman to hit a ball. I related the term to how Afghanistan was an entire country torn apart by uncertainty, complications and extreme danger. The cricket team faced a tricky situation in determining how to grow cricket in the country of Afghanistan. They could easily fail, or they could easily be successful. Thus, ‘The Corridor of Uncertainty’ kind of has a double meaning in the book.”
Suthar’s book is scheduled to be released worldwide in February 2016 by Pitch Publishing, in the United Kingdom.
“I searched for publishers that specialized in publishing sports books. Even though this book is written in such a way that readers with no sports knowledge would enjoy it, it is still a book that deals with cricket. Thus, I pitched my book to a traditional publisher in the UK called Pitch Publishing. They loved the book and decided to publish it,” Suthar said.
Pre-orders for the book will start at the beginning of 2016 on Amazon.com. It will also be sold in several other physical stores. Specific details on release of the book can be found at www.thecorridorofuncertainty.com, and more information on Suthar’s work in general can be found at www.niharsuthar.com.