Hammered 451* to break Yuvraj’s record, named BCCI’s best Under-16 player: The marathon man who captained Shreyas, Samson but never played for India

A 451*, a hundred on first-class debut and a 200* on Ranji debut - once destined to represent India. Then, almost without warning, the career simply vanished.

Let us begin with a cricket quiz. Name the India Under-19 captain who once had Sanju Samson, Shreyas Iyer, Sarfaraz Khan, Deepak Hooda, Kuldeep Yadav and Avesh Khan in and around his team. All of them went on to represent India on the senior stage, but the captain never did.

The left-handed batter was considered one of the best talents in his batch. (AFP)

Need another clue? He once scored 451 not out in age-group cricket, scored a century for India A on his first-class debut, and then followed it with an unbeaten double century on his Ranji Trophy debut. Okay, another more revealing clue: he has shared the RCB dressing room with Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers, and Chris Gayle.

At this point, not getting the name would lead to the general assumption that an injury had hit him, and as a result, he had failed to make it big at the highest stage. Or maybe there was a big controversy or a ban, something that ended such a prodigious career abruptly. The surprising part is that nothing of that sort happened. His cricket simply did not move the way everyone predicted.

The player is Vijay Zol. At one point, he was considered the next big thing in Indian cricket and one of the biggest batting prospects in the country. In December 2011, the left-handed batter scored 451 not out for Maharashtra Under-19 in the Cooch Behar Trophy against Assam. Zol’s epic knock took 466 deliveries, and he batted for nearly 10 hours during the innings. In the process, he also broke Yuvraj Singh’s tournament record of 358.

The 451 gave him recognition, but that was not the beginning of his story. He had already scored 858 runs in the 2010-11 season in just seven matches. The BCCI had awarded him the best Under-16 cricketer. That marathon innings made people notice him, while he had already shown signs of extraordinary batting talent before that.

Vijay Zol kept giving India reasons to believe

Zol was a part of India’s Under-19 World Cup-winning squad in 2012. Later, he was handed over the captaincy. In 2013, Zol scored 293 runs at an average of 73.25 while playing in a tri-series in Australia. He led India's unbeaten run in the tournament. Then he went to Sri Lanka and scored 173 in the first Youth Test, followed by a 128 in the next. By then, there was enough evidence that he was not simply bullying age-group attacks in India. Zol was standing up to international attacks and giving reasons to people following his game to believe that he could be the next one to carry the Indian batting forward.

There is a problem with age-group prodigies: they often fade when it comes to transition to the senior level. But that was not the case with Zol. He was selected for India A to play against New Zealand A even before he had made his Ranji Trophy debut. And against an attack that contained Doug Bracewell, Mark Gillespie, Ish Sodhi and Todd Astle, the 18-year-old Zol scored 110 on his first-class debut. Then, in his Ranji Trophy debut, he smashed an unbeaten 200 against Tripura while playing for Maharashtra.

Now, look at the body of work he already had by then. There was the famous 451, India Under-19 captaincy, successive Youth Test hundreds, a century on first-class debut and then an unbeaten double century on Ranji debut. Nothing at this stage would have made anyone believe that his entire first-class career would last just 15 matches.

RCB spotted Zol and made an early move for him. He spent time in a dressing room with Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers and Chris Gayle. Later, Zol spoke about seeking Kohli's advice when he became the Under-19 captain. In 2014, Zol played another significant knock. He scored 100 against arch-rivals Pakistan in the Under-19 Asia Cup final, helping India win the title. Zol’s first Ranji Trophy season had 517 runs in it at an average of 51.70. This included a 91 against Mumbai in the quarter-finals, knocking out the defending champions.

Then things started to change. The 2014 Under-19 World Cup was poor by the standards he had already set. He managed to score only 120 runs in five matches. He even faced suspension after pleading guilty to an ICC charge related to offensive language during the quarter-final defeat against England. However, it was not the moment his career started to collapse. Actually, there never was such a clean breaking point.

Runs gradually dried up, simply. He scored only 35 runs in three innings the following Ranji Trophy season, and Maharashtra started to shift their focus away from him. Zol’s IPL career had only three games in it, with 29 runs in them.

He made attempts at a comeback. Zol continued in the domestic arena and later led the Maharashtra Under-23 team, but the momentum of his early years never returned. His first-class career finished with 15 matches, 733 runs and two hundreds. One of those centuries came on his first-class debut, and the other one was the 200 not out on his Ranji debut.

Years later, Zol returned to the headlines, but this time for completely the wrong reasons. In 2023, he was booked over allegations linked to a cryptocurrency dispute. His family denied the allegations, and counter-complaints were filed. Zol was granted anticipatory bail. There has been no reliably reported final judicial outcome. However, his cricket career was already over by then.

A cricket story that had looked very promising since its onset. That had in it leading a group containing Shreyas Iyer, Sarfaraz Khan, Kuldeep Yadav, Avesh Khan and Deepak Hooda. A story that delivered a century whenever the level went up, finished probably in the most anticlimactic way possible. Almost everyone around him played at the international level, but Zol became the forgotten one.