Mayank Agarwal sets sights on Vijay Hazare glory for Karnataka
In what has been a glorious season for him, Karnataka opener Mayank Agarwal is now eyeing the Vijay Hazare Trophy for the Karnataka side. Agarwal, who was not selected in the upcoming Nidahas Trophy, also stated that he isn't worried about the selection and believes it will come at right time.
The Karnataka opener has been undergoing a terrific run of form of late on the domestic circuit, where has scored 1160 runs in the recently-concluded Ranji season at an eye-catching average of 105.45. He followed it up with 258 runs in Syed Mushtaq Ali T20s and has already scored 552 runs in the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy, at an average of 92 with a game yet to go.
However, while his blazing displays have got everyone talking in the domestic level, it was not enough to catch the selector’s attention for the Nidahas Trophy, who have handed chances to numerous fresh faces in next month’s Tri-series tourney. Agarwal, however, was unfazed by it and seemed more focused on the upcoming Vijay Hazare Trophy final.
"I think India call-up is not in my control, and I don't want to think about it too much now. I want to focus on the task at hand and that is the Vijay Hazare Trophy final. We'll be playing on the 27th, and the talk in the dressing room is that the people who are doing well right now have to take the team through. That's what we've spoken about,” Agarwal told Cricketnext.
“There's a lot of things to worry about in cricket, and thinking about selection can only worry you. And when you're playing a game, that should be your sole focus. So these things don't really cross your mind.”
Agarwal has scored eight centuries in this season so far, and added 81 more against Maharashtra, thus taking his tournament tally to 633 runs. The insane tally also helped him beat Dinesh Karthik's record of the highest-ever aggregate (607) in a single season.
The transformation has mainly been brought out by the way he practised hard in Bengaluru with his coach. He trained with synthetic and plastic balls to be a better stroke-maker and that helped him breaking records this year.
"Initially for a couple of years, we really worked hard on the technique. We didn't make any major changes, but our focus was on the minor alterations. I did get a lot of results from that, and we were quite sure about that. Also, this year it was a lot about situation-based practice for me. Like there were times we
“Then we did a lot of drills how I would go about in the middle overs of a 4-day game, or the starting overs in a 50-over game. We did a lot of practice. The message from the coach was that I need to find out my way of dealing
