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The second edition of the Maharaja Trophy 2023 commenced on 13th August 2023. In all, 33 T20 matches will be played in the tournament at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru.
Six teams feature in the tournament, each battling against the other twice and the top four teams will advance to the semi-finals. The final will be held on 29th August 2023.
A few young batsmen and some national team discards will look to get back to scoring big runs in the tournament. Here is a look at three such batsmen:
#1 Mayank Agarwal
Mayank Agarwal has been a prolific run-getter in domestic cricket across all formats. He was the second-highest run scorer in the recently concluded Deodhar Trophy.
The 32-year-old opener is an experienced campaigner as far as T20s are concerned. He has played 195 T20 matches and in 189 innings, has scored 4,548 runs at a strike rate of 134.19 with two centuries.
Agarwal will be keen to continue his purple patch of scoring big runs in 2023 and is hopeful for a comeback to the Indian T20I team on the back of strong domestic performances.
#2 Devdutt Padikkal
Padikkal came into the limelight during IPL 2020. In that edition, the left-handed opener won the Emerging Player award, having scored 473 runs in 15 matches.
Padikkal followed up the IPL 2020 season with another prolific season in IPL 2021, scoring more than 400 runs. Thereafter, he made his debut for Team India in the shortest format but could not make much of an impact. In 2 matches, he managed to score just 38 runs at an average of 19.
However, he did not have the best of times with the bat in IPL 2022 and 2023, and post-2021, has not been considered for selection in the national team.
Padikkal has tasted success in the IPL in the past and will look to get back to scoring ways in the shortest format to make a comeback to the Indian T20I team.
#3 Abhinav Manohar
Manohar has made a name for himself in the IPL. Though he has not scored many runs, he has been a perfect finisher for Gujarat Titans across two IPL seasons and has an impressive strike rate of almost 141 in 13 IPL innings.
His ability to play aggressive cricket from the word go has made him the most expensive player in the recently concluded Maharaja Trophy KSCA T20 auction.
Manohar is still a work in progress and a few strong domestic performances will show his prowess as a finisher in the shortest format.
