Ranji Trophy : Priyank Panchal leads the ‘run scorers’ table at end of league stage: The 26 year old Priyank Kirti Panchal of Gujarat leads the table of ‘leading run scorers’ at the end of the league stage of this season’s Ranji Trophy.
He also entered into the ‘record books’ by becoming the first-ever batsman from the state Ranji Team to score 1,000 runs in a season. This feat he achieved while playing in the game against Tamil Nadu at the KSCA Stadium, Belagavy.
With a tally of 1,037 runs from 11 innings, at an average of 115.22 and with the individual best of an unbeaten 314* runs, Panchal is sitting pretty at the top, closely followed on the heels by Prashant Chopra of Himachal Pradesh who has an accumulation of 978 runs from 17 innings at 57.52 average.
Panchal also has 4 centuries and 3 half centuries to his credit.
Since making his First Class debut against Saurashtra in Nov 2008, Panchal has featured in 50 FC games (79 innings – unbeaten on four occasions) and has a tally of 3,258 runs, at an average of 43.44, with 314* being his individual best. He also has 10 centuries and 11 half-centuries to his credit.
Gujarat, having made it to the quarter finals, Panchal would get some more opportunity/ies to score runs and keep his ‘numero uno’ position intact by the end of the season.
Priyank made his first appearance for the U15 team in the Polly Umrigar Trophy in 2003-04. He moved upwards to the U17 team and played in the Vijay Merchant Trophy 2005-06.
Starting the 2007-08 season with an appearance in U19 team, Panchal made his List A debut for the senior team against Maharashtra in Feb 2008. From then on there has been no ‘looking back’ for this youngster.
The BCCI selectors would do well to keep a track of this talented batsman’s performance during this season and look at him as a future prospect for the national team.