Virat Singh

The name itself is too big to carry in Indian cricket at the moment. With another Virat always hogging the limelight with his exceptional batting, it is bound to put some undue pressure on another Virat who is a lusty youngster from a state named Jharkhand that is producing extreme talents off late. 

A hard-hitting southpaw, Virat Singh has been doing the rounds in the domestic circuit for a few years now. He is a clean hitter of the ball, and courtesy of his ability to play the long ball, he was roped in by the Sunrisers Hyderabad for the 2020 edition of the Indian Premier League. 

Virat came into the limelight after racking hundred-thousand runs at the domestic level. He started off his cricketing career under the watchful mentorship of Venkatram. The southpaw made his U-19 debut for Jharkhand in the Vinoo Mankad Trophy in the 2012-13 season. In the same tournament, his elder brother Vishesh Singh also made a serious impact and both Singh brothers finished the U19 competition as the second and third highest run-getters. 

On the back of his impressive performances for his state at the junior level, Virat was selected to play in the BCCI inter-zonal competition. He then went onto lead Jharkhand in the 2013-14 Cooch Behar Trophy aged just 15. 

The Jamshed-born scored a sensational 146* in the interzonal trophy and followed it up with another sensational season with the bat in the Cooch Behar Trophy. Virat smashed 508 runs in just 5 matches which included a couple of centuries.  Following his impressive run at the U19 level, he made his senior debut for Jharkhand in the 2013-14 Vijay Hazare Trophy at a tender age of just 16 years. 

Then the explosive batsman played the Syed Mushtaq Ali season of 2019-20 and blasted 343 runs in just 10 games at a staggering strike-rate of 142.32 that led him to an IPL deal worth INR 1.9 crore, but unfortunately for him, due to the presence of players like Abdul Samad, Priyam Garg, and Vijay Shankar in the middle-order for SRH, the Jharkhand-based left-hander couldn’t make debut in the illustrious T20 league during the 2020 season. 

However, Virat Singh has again piled up runs in the domestic season of 2020-21. The stylish batter played a healthy role in the Jharkhand set up during the Syed Mushtaq Ali and the Vijay Hazare Trophy, and his T20 century against Assam was regarded as one of its best. In 2021, the Hyderabad-based club retained Virat for the 14th edition of the IPL and the batsman will be eagerly waiting for his time to come. 

(As of March 2021)