CHENNAI: The nature of the Indian Premier League (IPL) doesn't lend itself well to the primacy of scouts. Because of the absence of transfer fees and presence of auctions, teams may, at some point in time, be forced to release players they shaped and built in their own image.
Some franchises, though, have continued to unearth and develop players despite the talent drain. Mumbai Indians have a penchant for doing this. Over the last 14 years or so, they have scouted and onboarded the likes of Kuldeep Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya, three World Cup-winners and India regulars across formats.
There have been other, more recent success stories. Nehal Wadhera is one name that readily comes to mind. In 2025, that honour belongs to Vignesh Puthur, the Malappuram-born Kerala left-arm wrist-spinner who hadn't played a senior game for the State.
Yet, less than an hour after Noor Ahmad's dazzling spell, Puthur tried his best to keep his team in the game. And, for a period of time, he did just that by accounting for Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shivam Dube and Deepak Hooda across 12 balls. Like most left-arm wrist-spinners — the rarest primary skill because there are very few practitioners of this art form in the game — there is a mystery element attached to him.
It's what attracted Mumbai when he trialled with him before the mega auctions last year. "I think the uniqueness," said bowling coach, Paras Mhambrey. "I think in this format, you need to be a little bit different. You see all the Chinaman bowlers — Kuldeep prior to this has done well. So I think the idea of how we use him in terms of the potential that he has."
Because he was inexperienced — not really a problem because every year the league does tend to throw up performances from greenhorns — Mumbai wanted him to bring him upto speed. And fast. So they put the 23-year-old, who had initially caught the eye while playing for Alleppey Ripples in the first season of the Kerala Premier League, on a flight to be a net bowler for their sister concern, MI Cape Town. He spent more than a month bowling to the likes of Ryan Rickelton as well as shadowing the likes of Rashid Khan.
If that was part one of the plan, the second one was rather more fundamental. Would he make an impression on the likes of Rohit Sharma and Suryakumar Yadav in pre-season? The answer was yes. "I think when Rohit, Surya and Tilak (Varma)... when all these guys batted against him, they felt it wasn't easy," Mhambrey, former India bowling coach, said. It was why they decided to give him an IPL debut at Chennai. "Never easy, first game against CSK. But purely the way he responded, hats off. I think he got us in the game. Very happy about his performance."
After coming in as an Impact player in the second innings, he was pressed into service to defend what looked like a lost cause. With two well-set batters — Rachin Ravindra and Gaikwad — at the crease, it seemed like a case of giving the 24-year-old some experience with next to no pressure. Five balls later, he had removed the hosts' skipper. The ball was in the slot to be pumped downtown, an option Gaikwad accepted. But he holed out just inside the boundary at long off.
Dube perished in similar fashion, a boundary rider accepting the offering. Both of those balls were there in the slot but Puthur, son of an autorickshaw driver, will say you stand a chance of winning the lottery only when you buy the ticket. He bought a ticket.
These are very early days in his career but his journey from Malappuram — very much football country and a cricketing backwater — to Mumbai is just getting started. What was his initial few days like in the dressing room? "He's a sweet kid. He's a lovely kid to have in the team. He's more like a sponge right now, just absorbing everything, looking around, having conversations. You have heroes, you see them playing on TV, and all of a sudden, you are sharing the dressing room with them, sitting next to someone like Rohit. It's a dream come true for a lot of these guys, right?"
His technical attributes also checkout, according to Mhambrey. "He spins the ball pretty consistently. Lands the ball on pretty much what we wanted. Is pretty accurate... I think those are the tick marks that we look into but not only that. But it's just the fact that he is different. Spins the ball, has a googly. That kind of stuff. So you know he will be able to trouble quality batters with the skills that he has."
Just after he took the field to replace Rohit, one visit to the official MI website gave a small insight into how highly they rate him. "Kerala's sensation is the latest in Mumbai Indians' long list of unearthing the unknown," it read in the 'About' section of his page. "Well, he isn't staying unknown for long."
A few more Sunday nights under the IPL lights and he will become a 'household name' just like the website says.
