Devdutt was absolutely sensational last night! Those who have been following or are aware of him wouldn’t have been surprised by his knock yesterday. Devdutt Paddikal has been one of the best players in India’s domestic circuit and is rearing to play at the highest level. An added advantage for him is that he is getting a change to share the dressing room with legendary cricketers like Virat Kohli and AB De Villiers. The abundance of experience he is going to get from the two of them are unmatched. However who is he? What is all the hype around him? Can he make it large? Today we will be talking about Devdutt Paddikkal’s journey uptill now and a look at the journey of the India’s Future Star to look out for.
It all started in Kerala. Padikkal was born on the 7th of July in 2000 in Edappal, Kerala. His family moved from Hyderabad to Bangalore in 2011, where he begun training at the Karnataka Institute of Cricket. Starting from 2014, he represented Karnataka in under-16 and under-19 age categories. In 2017, he was selected by Bellary Tuskers in the Karnataka Premier League. He made his FC debut for Karnataka in the 2018-2019 Ranji Trophy on 28 November 2018. In December 2018, he was bought by the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the player auction for the 2019 Indian Premier League. He was really unlucky to not have got a game in IPL-2019. He then went on to make his IPL debut in 2020. He was superb in the previous season as he went on to become the first player in IPL history to score three fifties in his first four matches. He then made his List A debut in 2019. He then became the leading run-scorer of the Vijay Hazare Trophy in the 2019-2020 season. He scored 609 runs in 11 matches.
Despite all this, Devdutt was solely remembered for his performance in IPL 2020 as he win the Emerging Player Award in that season. He was also scored the most number of runs for RCB in IPL 2020. An important point to be noted is that RCB had world class players like Virat Kohli, AB De Villiers and Aaron Finch in their team, but it was still Paddikal who was their best batsman last season. He scored 473 runs in 15 matches for Royal Challengers Bangalore and that was just his debut IPL season! Even the legendary Sunil Gavaskar was mighty impressed with him and said that “My Brother in law nodded his head after watching him play, he did the same when he saw Rahul Dravid bat during his early days, this kid is special and will do wonders for sure” said Gavaskar in during IPL 2020. While Devdutt didn’t really have the best if starts to IPL-2021, he still managed to get starts in tough wickets like Chennai. It was yesterday where he got back to the grove and proved everyone why he’s someone to watch out for. Padikkal scored 101 not out, as RCB beat the RR by ten wickets. Now not only RCB fans but everyone have started to rate him really high and It won’t by surprising if Devdutt has a good IPL-2021 and starts to grab the attention of the Indian selectors