Ashok Dinda
Teams: Bengal and Kolkata Knight Riders
When Sourav Ganguly asked Ashok Dinda to open the bowling in first match of the IPL in Bangalore, it raised many an eyebrow. But the 24-year-old surprised everyone, clocking over 140 kmph and finishing with an impressive 2-9 off three overs.
The Knight Riders may have fared poorly in the IPL, but the right-arm fast bowler stood tall among the ruins, finishing with nine scalps from 13 matches with an economy rate of 6.66.
Coming from the village of Naichanpur in the backwaters of West Bengal, Dinda’s brisk rise started almost two years ago when Ganguly asked him to open the bowling in the Ranji Trophy opener in Mohali. On a green-top, Dinda ran through the Punjab batting with a five-wicket haul. Ever since, Bengal have relied heavily on Dinda’s ability to hit the deck. He may not have featured among the top wicket-takers in the Ranji season, but the chirpy Dinda has earned the tag of Bengal’s best fast bowler, leaving the more popular Ranadeb Bose behind.
“What makes Dinda special is his ability to generate real pace. In modern day cricket, speed is crucial, and that’s an important weapon he already possesses. For those of us who have seen him through this climb, the good showing in the IPL is no surprise,” says former national selector Sambaran Banerjee. “But he has to master two things — generating movement and consistency in longer versions of the game.”
Ricky Ponting and coach John Buchanan had plenty of praise for Dinda during the IPL campaign. “Among the new bowlers in the Kolkata team, Dinda was a special find, he surprised us all with his pace and we relied on him through the IPL tournament,” said Buchanan.
— Nadim Siraj

Pragyan Ojha
Teams: Hyderabad and Deccan Chargers
For a young boy who always wanted to be a cricketer, Hyderabad’s Bhavans School — where he had come from Orissa to study — gave Pragyan Ojha just the fillip he needed. “I also played cricket in Orissa, but in Hyderabad, when I started doing well for my school, I took to the game seriously,” says Ojha, the son of a plant manager in one of the factories of Orissa State Cooperative Producers Federation.
The 21-year old credits his success to his parents. “Though I come from a middle-class family, they always supported me. That helped me pursue my game freely.”
His consistent performances in local tournaments got him a place in the Hyderabad junior team. Ojha’s under-19 coach for Hyderabad, Yuvraj Singh, remembers Pragyan as a hungry, hard-working player who always gave his 100 per cent. “He was with me for two years and the passion for the game was always visible in his eyes. He has been taking bagful of wickets since the junior circuit. If you include all forms of the game, you’ll find that he’s been taking at least 50 wickets each season for the last five years. He’s not afraid to take his chances, and he’s always prepared to flight the ball,” said Singh, who is now one of the selectors for Hyderabad.
The figures speak volumes about the left-arm spinner’s consistency: 121 wickets from 30 first-class matches, 39 from 30 List A games. But it took 11 wickets from 13 IPL matches for the Deccan Chargers, at an economy rate of 7.67, to finally realise his dream of winning an India cap.
“It’s a dream to play for India. The selectors have shown faith in me, now it’s my turn to deliver,” says Ojha.
— Swarup Kar Purkayastha

Swapnil Asnodkar
Teams: Goa and Rajasthan Royals
Audacious—trust Shane Warne to go sniffing for that strain, and find it bursting out of the shortest member of his ragtag bunch. Swapnil Asnodkar, rising barely 5 ft from the ground, was plucked from the pool of little-known players at Jaipur and planted into the opening slot, replacing seasoned Pakistani Kamran Akmal against the Kolkata Knight Riders. The 24-year-old from Goa responded with a 34-ball 60, smacking three consecutive boundaries off Ajit Agarkar to make a statement of intent.
Sprinting alongside the burly Graeme Smith, the opener followed that up with two quickfire 30s, the impact of his brazen pulls and upper-cuts over slip making a far more potent impression than the scores suggest.
But far from being an adventurous run-maker on the domestic circuit, Asnodkar had created a stir in his home state Goa for piling up 254, the highest score for the minnows of the Plate Division. The chanceless knock, remembered for Asnodkar’s early reading of the ball and fluent strokes, proved his quality and not his flair for innovation.
Now nicknamed ‘Goa Cannon’, Asnodkar found in Warne a captain willing to encourage his chutzpah. “He’s very attacking and can play shots all around the wicket,” says former player Abey Kuruvilla, who first witnessed Asnodkar’s daredevilry with the DY Patil squad in Mumbai.
While Warne had worked closely with the Goan for two weeks at Jaipur before he made his IPL debut, Asnodkar is known to have benefited more from the pool-side talks Warne gave when holidaying during the team’s break in Goa. Assistant coach Darren Berry has termed Asnodkar the team’s biggest revelation. “We love the way he handles himself out there,” Berry says.
— Shivani Naik

Niraj Patel
Teams: Gujarat and Rajasthan Royals
While Shane Warne has been elucidating on the art of ‘constructing an over’ for bowlers, one of his key personnel— a late entrant to the Rajasthan Royals party—has been defining the craft of ‘constructing an innings’. Two last-over finishes for the Royals, effected with a pressure-easing boundary against Delhi and a nerveless six against Mumbai, mean that Niraj Patel has been Jaipur’s ice-man in the hot IPL summer.
Four matches, three innings, two not-outs. Averaging an unreal 101, Patel is Rajasthan’s latest in a line of match-winners. The left-hander — an U-19 World Cupper from Mohammad Kaif’s 1999 batch — has been a consistent run-getter for Gujarat, amassing the most runs in the 2004-5 domestic season. In the first-ever T20 tournament organised by the BCCI earlier, Patel finished with more than 300 runs, second only to Karan Goel, and most of his runs had come in pressure scenarios.
Picked for India A, he has had restricted opportunities, and even Shane Warne regrets not offering him a bigger role. “He’s been fantastic whenever he’s been asked to deliver, and gives us a good headache in selection,” Warne says.
The opposition tends to relax when Patel walks out, since he has no reputation of massive sixes, and have paid heavily for their miscalculation. An introvert who is selective in taking advice, Patel has gone about his job waiting for the chances that haven’t come often. “A man for the big games,” says Praveen Amre, his coach at Air-India. “He knows how to score runs, and was the only player in our team to get a 100 in the Times Shield final this year,” Amre recalls, saying that the big India call-up won’t be too far if he continues in the same vein.
— Shivani Naik

Dhawal Kulkarni
Teams: Mumbai and Mumbai Indians
For years, the Kulkarni household at Chunnabhatti in Mumbai has resembled a sports goods shop. The man of the house is a former university badminton champion, daughter a national level shooter, but it is the cricketer son with his huge kit —overflowing with pads, gloves and bats—who encroaches the most space.
An IPL stint for the junior Dhawal meant these days it is the Mumbai Indians blues that takes pride of place in the family wardrobe. It signifies the first cricketing high for the 19-year-old and the most celebrated moment for the sporting family. With just a few Ranji ODIs under his belt, Dhawal didn’t quite fancy his chances when he got invited for the Mumbai Indians net session where Sachin Tendulkar played selector. “Mera chance hai kya (do I really have a chance)?” he asked a local scribe as he waited for Sachin’s verdict.
In a few days time, the Wankhede was echoing to the chants of ‘Dhawal, Dhawal’ as the Mumbai Indians fans celebrated the young pacer. IPL has seen him spend long hours with teammate Shaun Pollock and a brief audience with Delhi’s Glenn McGrath.
Adjustments will be needed if he has to graduate from T20 to the game’s longer versions. Coach Lalchand Rajput says getting wickets in Ranji will be very different. “But Dhawal is a quick learner.”
— Devendra Pandey

Shikhar Dhawan
Teams: Delhi and Delhi Daredevils
Three years ago, Shikhar Dhawan — another player from Delhi’s renowned Sonnet Club that has produced cricketers such as Manoj Prabhakar, Ashish Nehra, Aakash Chopra, Raman Lamba, Ajay Sharma, Atul Wassan and Sanjeev Sharma — was on the verge of an India call-up. Impressing in 2004 under-19 World Cup in Bangladesh and the Challenger tournament in 2005, he was on the verge of a breakthrough. But the Delhi opener missed out by a whisker and, as often happens in Indian cricket, spiralled out of the selectors’ minds completely.
The subsequent year, he couldn’t even break into the North Zone team.
After spending two seasons in and out of the Delhi Ranji team — where he sometimes competes for slots with Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag and Aakash Chopra — Shikhar reinvented his game and had finished a splendid domestic season when the IPL arrived. Now, after 335 runs in the group stages of the tournament, he has again established himself as a premier India prospect.
“I think Shikhar is in the best phase of his career. He was a bit down in between, almost went into depression when he wasn’t picked up for the Indian team but he’s come back strongly. He now believes that he can perform against the best of attacks. This IPL has given him that opportunity, and he has delivered,” says his coach Tarak Sinha.
Shikhar wears the number ‘0’ jersey in the IPL. Once the hero of the India under-19 team, he says he now understands the value of starting from scratch.
— GS Vivek

Abhishek Nayar
Teams: Mumbai and Mumbai Indians
Abhishek Nayar still remembers the first interaction he had with Sachin Tendulkar before the Ranji Trophy final last year. “So you are Nayar, I have heard a lot about you,” Tendulkar had said. Nayar couldn’t sleep that night. For someone who studied at Shardashram and played for Shivaji Park Gymkhana, Nayar’s adulation for Tendulkar goes far beyond the usual star-stuck routine that the former captain gets everywhere.
Nayar was a reluctant cricketer in his early days but his mother, Lekha, would drag the 12-year-old to the nets. “I found cricket too boring back then. I’ve slept off in some games at the junior level,” he says. But things changed as Nayar gradually got hooked to the game. “It was a total turnaround. During exams my mother would ask me to study but I would sneak out to play cricket,” he says.
The Shardashram-Shivaji Park route took him, like it did Tendulkar, to the Ranji Trophy squad and, like many on this same road, he played for West Zone and India A. Nayar almost joined the Rajasthan Royals, since the Jaipur franchise scouts were the first to swoop on the big fish in their catchment area. It was the maidan loyalty and a call from Tendulkar that made Nayar opt for Mumbai.
During the IPL, Tendulkar promoted Nayar in the line-up a few times and he usually delivered. That, according to Mumbai Ranji coach Praveen Amre, made the difference. “If you show confidence in Nayar, he will give results,” Amre says.
— Devendra Pandey

Manpreet Singh Gony
Teams: Punjab and Chennai Super Kings
Just when Manpreet Singh Gony was having a rethink about pursuing cricket as a profession, frustrated at the lack of opportunities and looking at the financial instability of his life, he got a slot in the Punjab Ranji team thanks to ICL defections. Despite an average first impression, he got into the North Zone team for Deodhar Trophy because of the shortage of fast bowlers.
Chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar, who saw him bowl in one of the games, showered the strapping young man with compliments but no opportunities came his way. Even when the IPL boom first happened, he was out of the reckoning because his home side Punjab had fast-bowling riches in the form of Brett Lee, Sreesanth and Irfan Pathan. It was only when Chennai’s Sudhir Tyagi got injured that he landed a contract with the Super Kings.
And finally, the fairytale began. Gony’s height and his ability to hit the deck earned him rave reviews, and the presence of Indian skipper MS Dhoni — with whom his name rhymes almost uncannily — helped him get maximum mileage. But the highlight was his last-over antics with the bat against Delhi that handed Chennai an improbable win “Gony has impressed me with his speed and ability to extract bounce. But there’s one aspect that the country is yet to see of him — his batting. He’s a very big hitter and can turn into a good prospect for India,” says former India player and selector VB Chandrashekhar.
The seamer’s dream dismissal: caught MS Dhoni bowled MS Gony.
— GS Vivek