By its very nomenclature, the Indian Premier League is quintessentially Indian. Yes, several marquee overseas players go for big bucks and a few of them justify the faith and resources invested in them, but at the end of the day, with seven Indians making up the playing XI, the onus is on the home players to make the most of the platform at their disposal.
Over the years, the IPL has been the feeder route that numerous young stars-in-the-making have used to make it to the national team. The names roll off the tongue easily and rapidly – R. Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah, Suryakumar Yadav, Sanju Samson, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ishan Kishan, Varun Chakravarthy… Not all of them are necessarily products of the IPL, but it’s through their exploits in this high-profile T20 franchise-based tournament that they have made a stronger case for themselves.
Season 16 of the IPL has been no different. Admittedly, some established superstars, homegrown and from abroad, have made a telling impact, but as per norm, a host of young Indians has fired the imagination, none more so than the left-handed duo of Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rinku Singh.
Also read: Yashasvi Jaiswal, the next superstar from Mumbai’s school of batting?
Neither is an IPL newbie in the strictest sense of the term, but this year, they have graduated from support cast to the main act in spectacular fashion. Jaiswal, still only 21, sits second in the list of run-scorers, only behind Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Faf du Plessis, but as much as the impressive quantum of runs (477), it’s the stylish manner in and the breath-taking pace (strike rate 160.60) at which the Rajasthan Royals opener has amassed those runs that has been singularly impressive.
Jaiswal is no stranger to the big league – he averages an astonishing 80.21 in 15 first-class games for Mumbai and Rest of India – but this season, he has taken his game to a new level, leaving such illustrious colleagues as Jos Buttler, Samson and West Indian Shimron Hetmyer, all vastly more experienced, trailing in his wake. It won’t be long before his name is seriously discussed by the national selectors when they sit down to chart a long-term plan for the next T20 World Cup, a year away in North America.
Another man who has thrown his hat emphatically in the ring is Rinku, the 25-year-old from Uttar Pradesh. Pitchforked into the fray last season when all was lost for Kolkata Knight Riders, he made an instant impact with his busy presence in the middle, marked by outrageously muscular strokes under immense pressure. This year, Rinku was rewarded for his chutzpah with a permanent slot and became a household name by slamming sixes off the last five deliveries of the match from Yash Dayal to earn KKR an incredible win over title defenders Gujarat Titans.
His returns of 337 runs from 11 matches (strike rate 151.12) assume greater significance considering that they have been made in the middle order, towards the end of the innings when the need is for big hitting. From a finisher for his franchise, Rinku can realistically aspire to become a finisher for the country in due course, his left-handedness an additional string to the bow that can come in most handy.
In keeping with the trend of left-handers making their mark is Tilak Varma, the enormously gifted 20-year-old Hyderabadi who is representing Mumbai Indians. Last season, the strapping lad made nearly 400 runs for his franchise, and he has backed it up with another excellent run. Especially at the start of the season, Varma played with the maturity and composure of a veteran to keep his side afloat, and while he has since been upstaged by the return to form of Suryakumar and the explosive pyrotechnics of Tim David, he has shown in his brief career that he is more than capable of holding his own even in a celebrated line-up.
Shivam Dube, the powerful Mumbaikar who has found a new lease of life at Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings, is another who is belatedly coming into his own. Dube played briefly for the country – one ODI and 13 T20Is in three months between November 2019 and February 2020 –and seemed destined to fade away into oblivion, but CSK have used him with customary care and smarts to eke out bruising runs from his heavy willow.
While these might be the obvious candidates given that they all have scored in the vicinity of 300 runs, a fair few others are pulling their weight by scoring the runs that matter, even if they aren’t numerically substantial. Where Ajinkya Rahane, Shikhar Dhawan and Wriddhiman Saha are firing salvos for the old guard and Kishan, Gaikwad and Shubman Gill are leading the charge of the current generation, the likes of Jitesh Kumar, Nehal Wadhera, Prabhsimran Singh, Ayush Badoni and Abhishek Sharma are propping up Gen Next. Even as Prithvi Shaw, Sarfaraz Khan, Anuj Rawat and Deepak Hooda have been terribly disappointing, this quintet has kept the Indian flag flying high, unleashing the cameos that are often the difference between a get-out-of-jail heist and a soul-sapping defeat.
While the introduction of the Impact Player rule has allowed more Indian batsmen to parade their wares than at any other edition, it has also facilitated bowlers who are no longer paragons of fitness to do their bit. That’s why Piyush Chawla is among the top five wicket-takers. There is a distinct touch of experience and pedigree to the contestants for the Purple Cap and hardly any new face has broken through, the exception being the stocky right-arm quick from Mumbai, Tushar Deshpande who, like his city-mate Dube has found his calling at CSK.
What this reiterates is that for all the tricks the bowlers might master, T20 will remain a batsman’s game. Against this backdrop and given that India’s T20 outfit is an ageing one – ten of the 15-member squad that played the World Cup in Australia last October-November is 30-plus – this influx of new batting talent infuses the hope that a T20 World Cup title drought dating back to 2007 could well come to an end in the US and the Caribbean next summer.
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