20-year-old rookie from Royal Challengers Bangalore Devdutt Padikkal He lit up the Dubai International Stadium with a daring hitting game on the road to 56 of 42 balls, helping RCB off to a solid start. RCB had a new starting pair from rookie Padikkal and Australian Aaron Finch and they delivered, scoring 53 runs in powerplay overs.
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Padikkal was part of the RCB squad last year, but had not gotten a match. However, heading into this IPL season, the left-handed hitter was one of the most talked about names to consider. Karnataka’s next cricket star, Padikkal played a crucial role in their victories at both white ball tournaments last season.
Padikkal took his first step towards becoming Karnataka’s next rising star, breaking 609 runs in 11 games at the Vijay Hazare Trophy to top the batting charts and help the team win the tournament. From November to December, he proved he can effortlessly reformat to T20 cricket and topped the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy batting charts with 580 runs at an incredible 175.75 hit rate, with a century and five fifties. Once again, it was a performance that helped Karnataka win the tournament.
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On Monday, Padikkal made an immediate impact by driving Sandeep Sharma over the midwicket to start before slashing a past short fine to earn two limits. He then smoked SRH rookie T Natarajan for three fours in an over – one into deep square, then over extra coverage and the last over deep midwicket. Padikkal continued to show his range by throwing one straight to the ground in front of Mitchell Marsh. After the power play, he calmed down and Finch took on the role of aggressor.
Such was his confidence in the medium that Padikkal even tried to reverse Rashid Khan’s sweep. He finally reached his fifty in 36 balls with a sweep from Abhishek Sharma, making him the first IPL rookie since Sam Billing (CSK) in 2016 to hit the half-century mark. With this, he now has 50 in his First Class, List A, T20 and IPL debuts. But, he couldn’t go on and was castled by Vijay Shankar on 56 of 42 balls after falling deep into the same over.
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