The year 2020 is about to end and many people will be happy about that as it wasn’t a great year for many reasons. Talking about cricket, many important series and matches including the T20 World Cup had to be postponed. There wasn’t much cricket as the whole world was at a standstill from March to June. The Indian Cricket team played a series against New Zealand at the start of the year and now is touring Australia at the end of the year. They have managed to play only a couple of series this year which has resulted in only three players making their debut for India in 2020. In fact, no Test player made his debut as India will be playing only four Tests this year but there are three players who made their debut in the white-ball formats. So, let’s have a look at those three Indian players.
- Prithvi Shaw – ODI Debut
India’s regular ODI openers Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma both were injured and as a result, India had to rope in new openers for the ODI series against New Zealand earlier this year. Prithvi Shaw had made his Test debut in 2018 where he had scored a sensational century in his first game.
The young right-handed batsman played all the three ODIs and managed to score 84 runs in three innings at an average of 28 and a strike-rate of 102.44 with the highest score of 40. He was looking good in the final ODI before he got run-out on 40. Shikhar Dhawan was back in the squad for the ODI series against Australia and hence Shaw was left out of the squad. Prithvi Shaw is currently in the Test squad which will play four Tests in Australia.
- Mayank Agarwal – ODI debut
India had to hand over caps to both the openers in the same series as both the regular openers were missing due to an injury. As a result, Mayank Agarwal got his ODI cap along with Prithvi Shaw. The right-handed opening batsman managed to score only 36 runs in the whole series at an average of 12.
He failed to put up a big score in any of three ODIs but still, he was retained for the ODIs against Australia in the absence of Rohit Sharma. He played the first two ODIs and was replaced by the young Shubman Gill for the final ODI at Canberra. Agarwal is India’s first-choice Test opener, but he would need to work hard to get back his place in the ODIs.
- T Natarajan – ODI and T20I Debut
T Natarajan was the most impressive debutant for India in the year 2020. He had a great IPL and hence was picked as a net bowler for the tour to Australia. He got picked in the T20 squad as a replacement for spinner Varun Chakravarthy and got drafted in the ODI squad as a cover for Navdeep Saini.
The left-arm fast bowler got his ODI cap in the final ODI where he picked up two key wickets which helped India win the game. The ODI debut was followed by his T20I debut as he was picked in the first T20I at Canberra. He picked up three wickets on his T20I debut and was extremely impressive as a death bowler. He continued his great form in the last T20Is as he ended up with 6 wickets in three T20Is. Not only that, but he is a terrific death bowler and Virat Kohli has mentioned that he will a key bowler in the T20 World Cup next year.
