Sandeep Pattnaik

Like millions of others, Sandeep Pattnaik picked up the bat wanting to bat like Sachin Tendulkar. And year 2016 has seen the first step towards a dream that the 18 year old Sandeep has put on loop mode ever since he started taking cricket seriously. He has come up the ranks in Odisha cricket by playing age group cricket at under 14, under 16 and under 19 levels and has now graduated into the senior team.

He started plying his trade at BBCA, Bhubaneswar, one of the umpteen academies that the city has to offer. And now after a string of consistent scores in the KSCA invitational tournament, he has been picked as an opener for the Ranji Trophy for the current season of 2016-17. His scores of 75,30*,14,151 during the tourney helped him book his place for the long season ahead. He has already made an impression by scoring 123 in his second Ranji game against Saurashtra which helped Odisha pip their more favoured counterparts by 32 runs.

By Kumar Abhisekh Das