The Indian Premier League (IPL) auction has pitch-forked many unfancied domestic players into the limelight in national and international cricket. On Tuesday in Dubai, Uttar Pradesh's 20-year-old batter Sameer Rizvi added his name to that list.
An explosive hitter of the cricket ball, there was some expectation of the Meerut player attracting big money and he landed an ₹8.4 crore contract with MS Dhoni's Chennai Super Kings.
Until a few months, Rizvi was barely known outside the Meerut cricket circles, where he had achieved fame for his power-packed batting. The big transformation came along with attention from IPL scouts when he hit big sixes at Kanpur's Green Park stadium in the inaugural edition of the Uttar Pradesh T20 League in August-September.
Though his Kanpur Superstars couldn’t make it to the knockouts, Rizvi had made a name with the IPL auction approaching. He scored 455 runs in nine innings, with two hundreds, one of them the fastest of the tournament.
Selected for Uttar Pradesh's Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy squad, he hit 42* against Punjab in Mohali, but was pulled out of the team and asked to join the UP Men's U-23 State A Trophy (one-day). He scored 91 off 65 balls against Rajasthan, although the innings, laced with four fours and nine sixes, went in vain.
{{/usCountry}}Selected for Uttar Pradesh's Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy squad, he hit 42* against Punjab in Mohali, but was pulled out of the team and asked to join the UP Men's U-23 State A Trophy (one-day). He scored 91 off 65 balls against Rajasthan, although the innings, laced with four fours and nine sixes, went in vain.
{{/usCountry}}That was only a blip in UP's campaign as Sameer scored two consecutive centuries to help the team reach the pre-quarterfinals. UP won the knock-out matches to reach the final, where he hammered a 50-ball 84 to beat Uttarakhand. He topped the six-hitters' list with 37 in seven matches. He scored 454 runs in six innings in the tournament with an average of 75.67 and a strike rate of 156.55, including two centuries.
“I knew that all his good show will earn him big at the auction,” Rizvi’s uncle and coach Tankeeb Akhtar, a cricket coach who has trained his nephew since a tender age, said on Tuesday.
“After the UP T20 League, he got calls for trials with almost all the franchises, but he had to skip them as he was leading the U-23 side then," said Akhtar. “I shifted from my village to Meerut in 2004 so that I could pursue cricket. I stayed with my sister Rukhsana Khatoon.”
In the UP T20 League, Sameer was third in the list of leading scorers and joint first with Karan Sharma for hitting the most sixes (35).
Rizvi was also handed a Ranji Trophy debut in January 2020 aged just 16 only to be discarded after two matches. He made a comeback the next year in the 50-over side. Since then he has been an integral part of the white-ball squads.
He missed selection to the U-19 World Cup squad last year -- India became champions -- but it didn't dampen his spirits. UP's Rinku Singh is already making waves in IPL and with the India team. Come IPL 2024, fans may get the chance to cheer another another similar finisher.