3 milestones of Mayank Agarwal that brought him to the limelight

Mayank Agarwal was batting for Board President's XI against West Indies at Vadodara when he was told by this team management that he has been selected in the Test team to face West Indies in October. He made 90 runs in Vadodara. But this knock was just the trailer of the film he showed us in 2017-18 season.

The Karnataka batsman has been long knocking the doors of Indian cricket by amassing 2000 plus runs in all formats in the 2017-18 season. If that was not enough to convince the selectors, his 200 against South Africa A and his century in the quadrangular series this season proved his mettle.

Agarwal was included in the squad at the expense of his Karnataka teammate Karun Nair. Karun was unlucky to be left out after being given no chance to impress against England. Shikhar Dhawan and Murali Vijay's poor run in England made it difficult for the selector to ignore Mayank Agarwal. India needs to start fresh again in their pursuit of overseas success against the stronger teams. And Test matches in India should be used to blood in new players who have the potential to do well in the longer format.

We take a look at the three milestones Mayank achieved in the 2017-18 season which made the selectors finally give him a chance.

#3 Over 250 runs in Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy

The opening batsman scored 250 runs in 9 innings in a format which is not his favourite. His IPL performances show us that Mayank is not the best one around when it comes to T20 cricket. But he still scored 250 runs including 3 half-centuries in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.

He had a strike rate of 144.94 with the highest score of 86 which came against Kerala.

#2 Most runs in a List-A tournament

Mayank scored 723 runs in 8 innings of the Vijay Hazare Trophy which is BCCI's flagship List-A tournament. The record for most runs in List-A tournament for India was held by Sachin Tendulkar. Sachin had scored 673 runs in the ICC World Cup in 2003.

Mayank scored 3 hundred and 4 fifties with a strike rate of 107 and an average of 90.37. He also broke the record for the Vijay Hazare trophy by surpassing Dinesh Karthik. Dinesh Karthik had scored 607 runs in 9 matches in the 2016-17 season.

#1 Highest run-getter in Ranji Trophy 2017-18

The main and the foremost reason for Mayank's selection in the longer format of the game was his record in the 2017-18 Ranji season.

Mayank made 1160 runs in 13 innings. He had an astonishing average of 105.45. In fact, Agarwal was the only batsman who scored more than 1000 runs in the tournament.

The all-time record for Ranji Trophy is held by VVS Laxman. V.V.S. Laxman had scored 1415 runs in the 1999-2000 Ranji Trophy playing for Hyderabad. The selection of Prithvi Shaw over Mayank for the last 2 Test matches in England had raised quite a few eyebrows and Mayank had been piling up runs for long. But the selectors finally gave in to fans demands while selecting the team to face West Indies at home.