In the last 11 months, one Indian cricketer has been the highest-scorer in one-day and first-class cricket across the world and it isn't Virat Kohli. In fact, it isn't anyone who has played for India, yet.
Mayank Agarwal’s stupendous domestic season started with two ducks in one match and ended with him as the highest-scorer in the country.
But despite piling up the runs across formats, the Karnataka opener repeatedly found himself left out of the Team India squad. Each and every time though, he answered the omission with a big score.
The golden duck against Hyderabad opened the floodgates last October, starting with an unbeaten triple century against Maharashtra. Mayank then went onto score five centuries in four matches, achieving the rare feat of scoring 1000 runs in one single month. He then finished as the Ranji Trophy’s highest-scorer and kept up the pressure on the selectors by achieving the same feat in the Vijay Hazare one-day format tournament.
But when the selectors rested most of the regular players for the tri-series in Sri Lanka in March, Mayank’s name was not among the many new recruits.
So what does a champion do? He moves on and keeps scoring. Mayank travelled to England with India A and scored three centuries and then smashed a double hundred at home against South Africa.
But when the selectors picked a few new faces for the last two Tests against England, again… there was no mention of Mayank.
His reply: A century for India B followed by two more 50 plus scores and then a 111-ball 90 in a warm-up game against West Indies on the day BCCI announced their Test squad for West Indies.
And this time, there was no denying Mayan Agarwal. With his over 3000 runs in the last year, the 28-year-old has finally joined the Indian dressing room and will be vying for Shikhar Dhawan’s spot come 4th October.
The one big change apart from Shikhar Dhawan’s eviction was the dropping of Karun Nair from the Test squad against West Indies.
Remember him?
The guy who became only the second Indian after Virender Sehwag to score a triple century? Since that match in Chennai in December 2016, Karun has been given only three more outings, which did not include a match against England this summer. In fact while he was part for the squad, once the management decided to free up a spot in the middle order – they called Hanuma Vihari from India to give him a debut match and Karun remained in the dressing room.
Now, he’s back in India with no India A performance or much domestic cricket under his belt to earn a spot for West Indies or even the Australia tour.
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