Picked for Rs 20 lakh at the IPL auction, 19-year-old Suyash Sharma was passed off as “just another of those mystery spinners”.

But the teenager from Bhajanpura in east Delhi stole the spotlight on his IPL debut at Eden Gardens on Thursday, finishing with 3/30 in the Kolkata Knight Riders’ 81-run win over Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Though fellow KKR spinners Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy had broken RCB’s spine in their chase, it was Suyash who dismissed the potentially dangerous Dinesh Karthik.

Suyash looped one up outside the off-stump, inviting a mis-hit from the experienced Karthik to pick up the second of his three scalps. Coming in as the Knights’ Impact Player for Venkatesh Iyer, Suyash had taken his maiden IPL wicket — also his first at the senior level — by dismissing Anuj Rawat with another of his tossed-up deliveries.

For someone who is yet to have any first-class or List A experience, picking up three wickets in his very first appearance in a highly competitive tournament like the IPL is no ordinary achievement.

How it started

Coming from a humble background, Suyash was first spotted by the late Suresh Batra, a former Delhi spinner and one of Virat Kohli’s childhood coaches. He then got a chance to play for Madras Club in DDCA (Delhi and District Cricket Association) league and Run-Star Club in open tournaments.

Suyash, whose father is a cancer patient, had no backing from anyone in the DDCA brass, but he did manage to draw the attention of Gagan Khoda, a former national selector and ex-chairman of the DDCA selection committee, during trials conducted for the Delhi U-25 side. “I saw him for four days and then took the call of including him in the squad for the (BCCI U-25) one-day competition,” Khoda told The Telegraph on Friday.

“He went on to play in a few one-dayers then. What impressed me was his temperament and deception. He’s quick through the air and batsmen thus could struggle to pick whether the ball will spin or be a straighter one.”

According to some DDCA insiders, Suyash’s selection in the Delhi U-25 squad didn’t go down well with some of the association “bigwigs”. He had also appeared at Mumbai Indians’ trials but was not selected.

Difficult to pick

For Knight Riders captain Nitish Rana, Suyash is “not a mystery spinner, but just a normal leg-spinner”. “Suyash’s X factor is his quick arm speed... Batters will be in trouble if they fail to pick which one would be a googly and which one a leg-spin.”

Narine and Chakravarthy are good spinners but Suyash has the surprise element and with hard work, he can turn into a match-winner for the Knights in their IPL 2023 campaign.