IPL 2023: In Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tilak Varma and Abhishek Sharma, India have a great future. Yashasvi Jaiswal is the 2nd highest run getter (575 runs) in IPL 2023 at the moment.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) over the years has time and again provided the Indian team with greatly talented players who have gone to represent the national side finding great success. Guys like Hardik Pandya, Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel made IPL a great launching pad before playing for the men in blue across formats.
Now the IPL is in its 16th year and has almost reached the climax as we are into the last 2 weeks of this 2 months extravaganza. There have been many scintillating performances both by the players and collectively as a team.
Here in this piece, we will focus on the young Indian batters who have made this IPL a tournament to remember for them as well as giving India a hope of finding someone who has potential to represent the national team for a long time.
The players we are talking about here are Yashasvi Jaiswal, Abhishek Sharma and Tilak Verma. One common thing among them is that all these three are left-handed batters and are natural stroke makers. But they play different roles for their respective sides in the IPL. Let us look at how each of them have fared in this IPL.
Read More: IPL 2023, KKR vs RR: Chahal, Jaiswal's carnage take Rajasthan to third spot in points table
Yashasvi Jaiswal (575 Runs, SR 167.15)
Yashasvi Jaiswal has been the batting mainstay for Rajasthan Royals this season. The young batter from Mumbai had been in sensational form coming into this IPL, and it has to be said that the opener also performed well in the IPL.
In the 12 matches he has opened for Rajasthan Royals in 2023, Jaiswal has amassed 575 runs at a strike rate of over 160 to be the second-highest run-getter of the season. This is a great improvement from last year where Yashasvi could score only 258 runs in 10 innings. But this season, he has been a different beast at the top of the order and has played some fantastic knocks throughout the season.
His 124 against MI at Wankhede Stadium is an innings to remember and will definitely be one to savour for the youngster for a long time. This remains the highest ever score by an uncapped Indian batter and the highest individual score this season. Yes, he scored 124, but what was so great about that knock was that Jaiswal scored 112 of those runs in boundaries and the way he attacked the overseas MI pacers including Jofra Archer was heartening to watch.
RR needed someone to step up on a consistent basis and Jaiswal proved to be the go-to player for them this season even ahead of the established Jos Buttler and skipper Sanju Samson.
Read More: IPL 2023, MI vs RR: Jaiswal's 124 goes in vain as SKY, David chase down 200+ run target at Wankhede
Tilak Verma (274 runs, SR 158.38)
If Yashasvi has been a star for the Royals, Tilak Verma has been a shining light for the Mumbai Indians. The young left-hander had a memorable debut IPL season in 2022 where he made 397 runs to be MI’s second-highest run-getter and followed up with yet another noteworthy season for the 5-time champions.
Though he had to miss out on a couple of games this season due to a niggle, Tilak has scored 274 runs at an impressive average of 45.87 scoring at a strike rate of over 158, which is simply outstanding. All this while coming at no.4 or 5 in a star-studded MI batting line-up. He is a natural upper order batter but has taken the middle order role given by MI to perfection and this augurs well for both MI and young Tilak in years to come.
Among his impressive outings this season, there are 2 innings that stands out. One is the unbeaten 84 he scored against the RCB in the opening fixture. This came at a time where MI had lost their way courtesy of losing quick wickets at the top and Tilak single-handedly took MI to a decent score of 171/7. Though MI lost, Tilak Verma’s knock was nothing short of special.
The other one came in a winning cause against the Punjab Kings where he scored a blistering 26 from just 10 balls to enable MI chase down 215 with more than 1 over to spare. He hit 3 monstrous sixes to finish off the game for MI.
Read More: IPL 2023, RCB v MI: Tilak's 84 goes in vain as Kohli and du Plessis dominate at Chinnaswamy
Abhishek Sharma (210 runs, SR 152.17)
Another player who has impressed is Punjab all-rounder Abhishek Sharma who represents the Sunrisers Hyderabad. He had a good season last year scoring 426 runs at a strike rate of over 133 mostly batting at the top of the order. He was expected to start again as an opener this season but due to striking a balance in team combination, Abhishek didn’t play initial games and whenever he played he came in the middle order.
SRH tried many openers including Harry Brook, Mayank Agarwal but didn’t find a stable opening combination. This prompted SRH to go back to the 22-year-old at the top of the order and immediately the youngster responded in style scoring a 36-ball 67 and following it up with another half-century in SRH’s fixture against RR.
Sharma has shown his ability to play in any situation and is more than useful as a left-arm spinner. Though used quite less due to presence of other spinners, Abhishek has found success in domestic circuit. Overall, he is great utility player and is quite brilliant in the field as well.
These three young players need to groomed and nurtured by the BCCI if they are to emerge world beaters in the next decade or so. All of them have the potential to be the best in their roles, and it is upto the board to take them in the right direction.
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