Ranji Trophy 2024: Karnataka Announce Mayank Agarwal As Captain For Upcoming Ranji Season
The Ranji Trophy 2024 season is set to begin on January 5, Karnataka have appointed experienced opener Mayank Agarwal as their skipper for the first two games of the season. Promising young batter Nikin Jose will be his deputy as Karnataka get ready to start their domestic campaign in red-ball cricket. Karnataka were knocked out in the semi-finals of the 2022-23 Ranji Trophy season by Saurashtra who went on to win the season defeating Bengal in the finals.
However, KL Rahul was not named in the 16-man Karnataka squad for the Ranji Trophy season as he would likely be busy with the home series for India against Afghanistan (Three T20Is) and England (five Tests). KL Rahul will have a packed January and February playing for the national team hence Mayank Agarwal was named as the skipper.
Mayank Agarwal had a terrific 2022-23 domestic season as he emerged as the top run-getter in the circuit with 990 runs from nine matches averaging 82.50. He scored three centuries and six half-centuries in the season and was in top form for Karnataka. However, he had a terrible IPL 2023 campaign and was out of form for a long time since the start of the 2023 edition of India’s lucrative T20 league.
The Karnataka batter has represented India in 21 Test matches and has accumulated 1488 runs at an average of 41.33. He has six fifties, four hundreds, and two double hundreds in Test cricket and was a regular opener for India in red-ball cricket from 2018-2021. However, after the arrival of Shubman Gill in the Test squad he was sidelined from the team as Gill impressed everyone by scoring a brilliant 91 on his debut at the Gabba in the 2020-21 Border-Gavaskar trophy.
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Karnataka Will Play Their First Game Against Punjab
The Karnataka team will open their Ranji campaign against Punjab at Hubli from January 5-8 and in their second match, the 2014-15 champions will face Gujarat in Ahmedabad from January 12-15. Former batter PV Shashikanth will remain the coach of the Karnataka side. The team is yet to win a Ranji Trophy since their last victory in the 2014-15 season.
This time under the leadership of Mayank Agarwal and with the likes of Manish Pandey, Devdutt Padikkal, Vidwath Kaverappa, Nikin Jose, and Vijaykumar Vysakh, the team is looking strong on paper. The Ranji trophy 2023-24 season will commence on January 5 and is scheduled to conclude on March 14. It will be followed by the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 which is scheduled from the third week of March to the last week of May.
Karnataka skipper Mayank Agarwal will be playing for Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL 2024 season. He had a terrible IPL 2023 campaign and was completely out of touch but just before that he finished as the highest run-getter in the Ranji Trophy and was in terrific touch. The team will expect him to lead by example and carry the team to the title after nine years.
Karnataka squad: Mayank Agarwal (c), Ravikumar Samarth, Devdutt Padikkal, Nikin Jose (vc), Manish Pandey, Shubhang Hegde, Sharath Srinivas (wk), Vysakh Vijayakumar, Vasuki Koushik, Vidwath Kaverappa, K Shashikumar, Sujay Sateri (wk), D Nischal, M Venkatesh, Kishan S Bedare, AC Rohit Kumar.
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