IPL 2016: Mumbai Indians’ talented north-south duo of young hopefuls have an eye on Team India

Unmukt Chand during his U19 days

It has been widely acknowledged that the IPL is the perfect stage to impress the famous ‘wise men’ of Indian cricket - the national selectors. Ambati Rayudu and Manish Pandey are among those who have secured career lifelines riding on the IPL bandwagon. Remember also Kuldeep Yadav, Uttar Pradesh’s young ‘chinaman’ exponent, who got a Team India call-up after an impressive IPL.

So come the ninth edition of this annual, nearly two-month long, slam-bang cricket jamboree, a motley crew of young cricketing talent from the country would be looking to put their best foot forward in order to achieve their dream of playing for Team India.

Spots, both in the batting and bowling departments and across the three formats, are sure to open up as far as the senior Indian cricket squads are concerned.

Wriddhiman Saha has just about managed to hold on to his place and has the confidence of new captain Virat Kohli to be the Indian Test wicketkeeper after MS Dhoni’s retirement from the sport's oldest and longest format.

That retirement also means that India has a new Test captain. A new captain is known to look around, to build his own team with his own his own set of player preferences. Given Kohli’s public image of supreme faith and confidence in his own abilities, it will be a surprise if he does not venture into doing things his way, sooner or later.

The fact that a couple of candidates across both the batting and bowling units have been performing inconsistently for long will surely add fuel to any such desire for ‘making a change’.

Therein lies the opportunity that these young hopefuls, fairly consistent in displaying good performance and temperament for a period of time in first-class cricket, will be looking to grab.

But why am I talking Test cricket when the IPL is played in the T20 format? For one, because Team India plays about 18 Test matches as compared to just 13 ODIs and a lone T20 international over the next 12 months, making Tests the immediate opportunity. Also, it has been clearly reiterated in the recently concluded T20 World Cup, that a top cricketer is a top cricketer across formats. The rest have special skills suited to one format or the other.

So who are these young hopefuls, who have been on the verge of senior India selection for a while but not yet made the cut?

Delhi has been producing the most number of top order Team India batsmen in the recent past and 22-year-old Unmukt Chand has been trying to join that elite club for some time now. But after the heroics of the victorious 2012 U-19 World Cup campaign, where he announced himself with a classy century in the final against Australia, Chand has been surprisingly miserly with his performances.

He has been steady in his first-class career for Delhi, playing some vital knocks when most required, and has displayed glimpses of his potential in a couple of IPL and CLT20 games as well. He has also been in good form recently and has stitched together a string of good scores for Delhi across various domestic tournaments.

With the Indian Test top six mostly selecting themselves, Chand would be looking to make it as one of the top order reserves in the squad on the back of a resounding performance with the bat in this IPL. Going by the squad construct of Mumbai Indians, Chand should not be deprived of chances to perform at the top of the order.

India play five Test matches away from home in the next four months and native logic suggests a specialist opener should travel as reserve. Once you make it to the squad, you never know when the opportunity presents itself to cement your place in the Indian playing XI, for some time at least. What brightens Chand’s chances even more than say a Shreyas Iyer’s is the fact that he is a born and bred opener.

Murali Vijay is pushing the wrong side of the 30s. Shikhar Dhawan has been prone to inconsistency at the highest level and has been living on the edge for long. Cheteshwar Pujara has also not exactly been blazing the Test grounds all over the world. He is also not considered a natural opener, but a stop-gap option at best.

A good consistent IPL showing and chances are, Chand will make it onboard the flight to Harare in June and subsequently to the West Indies. For that to happen, he will have to make every opportunity count starting Mumbai Indians’ first match on 9 April.

Chand’s Mumbai Indians teammate and fellow 22-year-old, Karnataka’s Shreyas Gopal, has also been on the selectors' radar for some time now. The fact that a leg-spinner is an asset to a cricket squad is undisputed and if that leg-spinner is also a middle-order batsman of considerable quality and the highest temperament, it is akin to manna in the desert.

Gopal has come through the ranks of a high-quality Karnataka cricket talent-spotting setup which has given the country some of its most legendary Test players. Time and again playing for a highly successful present day Karnataka side, Gopal has come up with stellar and match-winning performances with both bat and ball when it mattered.

After 29 matches, he has a first-class batting average of 35 with three tons and three fifties in a two-plus year career. Given that at times he has even come to bat at number 9, that is a great return.

Over the same period, Gopal has snared 92 wickets at an average of 27 and an economy of 3.5, which is outstanding for a leg-spinner. More importantly, he has shown the pleasant tendency to come up with the goods when it has mattered the most.

While it is apparent that Ravichandran Ashwin will be India’s lead spinner for some time to come, his present first-choice partner Ravindra Jadeja is known to be too pitch-dependent when it comes to bowling, and dependent on the Almighty most of the times when it comes to Test match batting. Sure he has had a couple of moments with the bat as well, to be fair, but those are not nearly enough.

The 35-year-old Bhajji does not solve the problem of variation in the spin attack, and besides, age is not on his side. And the 34-year-old Amit Mishra has been par for the course at best.

As mentioned earlier, Kuldeep Yadav did get an India call after an impressive season in the previous IPL but could not get an opportunity to cement his place as the West Indies pulled out of that particular tour. Since then, Yadav has been fairly average on the performance graph of domestic cricket while Gopal has continued to grow and get better.

So Gopal will be fancying his chances either as a replacement for Jadeja in ‘unfriendly’ pitches abroad or for the third spinner's spot in home conditions, whichever the case maybe. A place in the Test squad, at least, can be a certainty if a good IPL performance is forthcoming. And if the slightest desire for inculcating new blood in the spin department is shown by the men who matter, he may very well be making his debut soon.

Here’s wishing the duo all the very best!