TNPL 2016: Team of the tournament

Baba Aparajith

At the start, B Aparajith set the tournament on fire

Unlike the other names in the team of the TNPL 2016, B Aparajith is someone who has established himself on the big stage when he was the star of India’s triumph in the 2012 under-19 World Cup in which he starred for the boys in blue with both bat and ball in almost all the games.

A lot was expected from Aparajith in this tournament and the youngster didn’t disappoint as he scored a swashbuckling 100 in the second game of the game of the tournament and followed it up with a 91 off just 54 balls in the next game. He also scored an unbeaten 79 in another game and took his team, VB Thiruvallur Veerans to victory from the jaws of defeat.

One thing that stood out is his approach towards his batting as he hardly played a fancy shot and showed that the batsman with proper textbook shots can survive in T20s. Being a part of a Duleep trophy side meant that he could play just five matches in the tournament.

But in those five matches, he scored 293 runs at a Bradman-esque average of 97.67 and a stunning strike-rate of 175.44.

Unfortunately, his heroics couldn’t take his team to the semis as they were knocked out after the league stage as there were two more teams that had a superior NRR than the Veerans.