Young Karnataka batsman Devdutt Padikkal made a brilliant debut during the last Indian Premier League (IPL) season while opening the innings for Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB). The 20-year old emerged as the leading run-getter for his side and won the ‘Emerging Player of the Year’ award as well.
RCB head coach Simon Katich called Padikkal brilliant and said that RCB’s preparation for 2021 began soon after the last season concluded. Katich said that the team management had their eyes on the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament and local domestic tournaments looking for young Indian talent.
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“We have done a lot of reviewing right when the season finished because throughout the season you are looking at how you can improve, the areas in your game that should be improved to be at the best. So a lot of work was done particularly in a week straight after season. We did mock auctions, basically, it was following the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy and a lot of local tournaments. We felt like we were ready for the options,” said Katich in a video posted on RCB’s Twitter handle.
Padikkal didn’t let us down, he was brilliant – Katich
Mohammed Azharuddeen was one of the top buys for RCB during this year’s auctions The young talent from Kerala scored a 37-ball century in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy gives his side an added flexibility as he’s a wicket-keeper too.
Katich also mentioned Devdutt Padikkal in his statements. The former Australian opener said that he was one of the young Indian talents RCB had backed during IPL 2020 and someone who didn’t disappoint the franchise.
“We made a conscious effort to try and keep the core of the group together and we felt in the last season there were a lot of positives. For the first times in a number of years, we got to the playoffs. The other part was that we did back a lot of young Indian talent and when I say that we backed the young kid Padikkal at top of the order. He had never played IPL, he didn’t let us down, he was brilliant,” he further said.
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