The IPL is the perfect platform for young Indian players to showcase their skill. The tagline of IPL is “Where talent meets opportunity”, and that’s exactly what has happened. Young Indian players have had the chance of rubbing shoulders with the world’s best players. In fact two of the players who I have mentioned below are part of CricIndeed’s Best XI of this IPL Season.
Every year a lot of uncapped Indian players enjoy fruitful campaigns which allow them to be in contention for a place in the national set up.
Here are 5 of the best uncapped players of the 13th edition of the IPL (in no order):
1. Devdutt Padikkal:
Devdutt Padikkal enjoyed a great domestic season for Karnataka leading up to the IPL. While he showed good potential, no one expected him to score 400+ runs in his debut season. He became the quickest player to score 3 half-centuries in IPL history as he took only four games to do so.
The 20-year-old opener has the flamboyance of Yuvraj Singh and the temperament of Rahul Dravid. As the rumours of a mega auction louden, it will be interesting to see whether or not RCB decide to retain him in one way or another. If they fail to do so, it could come back to haunt them in the future.
2. Suryakumar Yadav:
It is quite bizarre how a player of Suryakumar Yadav’s ilk has still not been included in the national squad. He has been scoring runs for fun in the domestic circuit for as long as I can remember. He is very versatile as far as batting position is concerned and has the ability to hit both classical and innovative shots.
Since he arrived at Mumbai Indians in 2018, he has crossed the 400 run mark in all the seasons. During the last three seasons, only Kohli, Dhawan, Rahul and Pant have scored more runs than “SKY” among the Indian batsmen. I will be shocked to see him missing from next year’s T20 world cup squad.
3. Varun Chakravarthy:
Varun Chakravarthy’s story is better than most fairy tales. He was signed for a lot of money by Kings XI Punjab last season but was removed after being taken to the cleaners in his debut game. This season, he was brought in to replace Kuldeep Yadav and didn’t disappoint anyone as took a lot of wickets at a low economy rate.
The Tamil Nadu mystery spinner picked up 17 wickets in the tournament, and he was just behind Rashid and Chahal in terms of wickets taken by a spinner. He took the only 5 wicket haul this season which earned him a place in the T20 squad, but an unfortunate injury has ruled him out of the series.
4. Thangarasu Natarajan:
Thangarasu Natarajan’s journey has also had its ups and downs. The 29-year-old fast bowler was handed the responsibility of bowling at the death for the Sunrisers Hyderabad, and he took up the challenge with great aplomb. The left-arm seamer picked up 16 wickets this season.
He has been selected as a replacement for the aforementioned Chakravarthy in the tour of Australia which means his days as an uncapped player are numbered. He has earned the tag of being a “Yorker specialist” as he delivered the most yorkers in the recently concluded IPL 2020 season. He is also one of the best finds of this IPL season chosen by our team.
5. Ishan Kishan:
Ishan Kishan was arguably the best-uncapped player this season. He not only reached the coveted 500 run milestone but he did it while having an average above 50 and a strike rate close to 150. He showed a lot of maturity in his batting and played sensible cricket throughout the season.
The fact that he is a wicket-keeper who can field well coupled with the additional versatility he provides at the top of the order and in the middle order makes him a serious contender as MS Dhoni’s heir in white-ball cricket. Kishan also took home the award for hitting the most sixes this season and almost broke Sanath Jayasuriya’s 12-year-old most sixes record at MI.
