Venkatesh Iyer

A loose-limbed and tall pace-bowling allrounder, Venkatesh Iyer was briefly a much sought-after player in white-ball cricket for India. He had shone with both and ball as India searched for Hardik Pandya's back-up in the lead-up to the 2021 and 2022 T20 World Cups.

Cricket was not always his first career choice. A "bright student," in his own words, Venkatesh was on his way to becoming a Chartered Accountant before he switched to finish an MBA in finance while also playing side by side, which landed him a job with the high-profile accounting firm Deloitte in 2018 when he decided to focus solely on cricket.

Venkatesh made his white-ball debuts for Madhya Pradesh in 2015 and a Ranji Trophy debut followed in 2018. But he came into his own around the 2020-21 season. He hammered unbeaten scores of 87 and 88 to finish the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy with an average of 75.66 and a strike rate of nearly 150. In the Vijay Hazare Trophy that followed, Venkatesh clobbered a 146-ball 198 against a Punjab side that featured Sandeep Sharma, Siddarth Kaul, Harpreet Brar and Mayank Markande. And with those credentials, he got his maiden IPL deal, with KKR, in 2021, for a base price of Rs 20 lakh.

His 370 runs at the top of the order and pace-bowling skill soon sent him to the T20 World Cup in the UAE as a net bowler with the India squad. Soon after that World Cup, he got his T20I cap, an ODI debut in South Africa in January 2022, and was among the four players retained by KKR for 2022, which shot up his salary by 40 times to Rs 8 crore.

His fledgling India career wasn't as dreamy though. He had to adapt to batting as a finisher, especially in T20Is, and he made a mark with a few useful knocks at home in early 2022. Venkatesh's stocks then fell sharply with an ankle injury when he fell down the hotel stairs during the 2022-23 domestic season. In 2023, he had to restart only as a batter and it was with the help of the Impact Player rule during the IPL that without bowling a single ball, he scripted another memorable season with KKR, which included his maiden T20 century. He returned to full fitness, including for bowling in the Ranji Trophy, in the 2023-24 season in which he scored nearly 550 runs in the Ranji Trophy and picked wickets consistently across formats. He registered four half-centuries while striking at over 158 in KKR's victorious IPL campaign in 2024 but hardly got to bowl because of the plethora of bowling options in the team.

Vishal Dikshit