Akshay More

Akshay More was born on 4 December 2003 and grew up around Indapur, in the Pune district of Maharashtra. He started baseball in 2019 under coach Vikram Galande at Narayandas School, then rebuilt his delivery with Vishnu Kalel after a district final loss and the pandemic pause. His father wanted an agriculture degree; Kalel helped him land at Lovely Professional University in Jalandhar so the classroom and the mound could coexist.

The velocity climb was public in Indian baseball’s small pond. Inter-university silver, pitcher-of-the-tournament honors, and a top speed reported near 91 mph made him the country’s fastest arm before any NPB scout arrived. He had already been a national judo championships runner-up — the athleticism Seibu later sold in its announcement. Baseball United, the Middle East and South Asia’s first pro league, put him on the Mumbai Cobras; a five-game sample of 14⅔ innings, a 2.46 ERA, and 11 strikeouts traveled with the signing packet.

On 27 July 2026 the Saitama Seibu Lions announced a 2026 development (ikusei) contract — uniform 146 — under the club’s Global Strategy. Executive director Koji Hiroike framed the bet plainly: Japan had been More’s dream, the 194 cm frame creates extension, the fastball reaches 150 km/h, and the offspeed mix (sinker, splitter, changeup, curve) is already there for a six-year baseball résumé. It is the first professional NPB contract for a player from India.

Read it as infrastructure, not a finished big-leaguer. Development contracts sit outside the main roster; many never surface. What matters for the Index is the lane: an Indian pitcher whose path ran through university baseball and Baseball United into Tokorozawa, not through the cricket pipeline that usually defines Indian sport exports. If Seibu’s lab turns the arm into a farmhand who sticks, Indian baseball gets a proof point. If it does not, the plaque still marks the first door Japan opened.