Will Young and Leona Lewis must be jealous. All they got for winning Pop Idol and The X Factor were fame, heaps of money, a Christmas No 1 single and the chance to hobnob with David Walliams. Sukhvir Singh, who two months ago won a cricket-based television talent show, got something far more precious: a contract to play cricket for Leicestershire.

Singh, the 20-year-old son of a bus driver from Chandigarh, in northern India, arrived in England last week and yesterday made his second XI debut for Leicestershire against Derbyshire at Grace Road. He had earned his prize by seeing off 25,000 hopefuls who entered Cricket Star, a reality show on Zee TV in India, which had Kapil Dev and Sanjay Manjrekar in the roles of Simon Cowell and Sharon Osbourne from The X Factor.

In contrast to the millions who watched Cricket Star, there were only a handful of spectators at Leicestershire’s ground. Singh, who played his first game in this country at the weekend when he took three for 13 for Leicester Ivanhoe in the Everards Premier League, was given three overs yesterday, yielding 13 runs.

Singh’s English is faltering but, speaking through an interpreter, he talked of the “dream opportunity” he had been given. “I feel very honoured to be the first Cricket Star winner to come over here and I owe it to all those people who voted for me to make the most of this chance,” he said.

“I entered Cricket Star because I felt it was the perfect chance for me to show my potential.”

He was already aware of Paul Nixon and Stuart Broad, his new Leicestershire teammates, through seeing them play for England on television over the winter. “It will be great to learn from guys like them,” Singh said, although he lists Sourav Ganguly and Brett Lee as his international heroes.

The talent show was created by Simon Hughes, the former Middlesex fast-medium bowler, and developed by Investors in Cricket, a management company in Asia, to give players from underprivileged backgrounds a chance to show their skills. Almost 25,000 people entered the competition, which was whittled down to 22 for the televised section that started in December.

The players were given coaching in an academy from international cricketers such as Waqar Younis, Mahela Jayawardena, Geoffrey Boycott and Monty Panesar, and were gradually pruned down by telephone voting to a squad of 11, who played a series of Twenty20 matches, culminating in a game against Leicestershire watched by millions on television.

Singh, a right-arm fast bowler, was the clear winner in the final viewers’ poll, although Dev added that two other players would receive runner-up prizes of a coaching scholarship with Robin Singh, the former India all-rounder.

While it was not officially sanctioned by the BCCI, the Indian board will have taken an interest in the talent that the show unearthed. There are plans to spread the concept to Pakistan and England.

Singh will be able to play only second XI cricket this season because of the limit on overseas players, but Tim Boon, the Leicestershire senior coach, said: “Sukhvir will enjoy all the privileges of a professional cricketer while he is here. He will go through all the fitness testing and screening as well as practising with the squad.”

Fraser Castellino, the chief executive of Investors in Cricket, said: “The one piece of advice I have given Sukhvir is to take in everything from the experience. I am sure he can learn so much from working in a professional set-up like this.”