Rinku appointed as captain for UP in Vijay Hazare Trophy

Lucknow: After successfully guiding the Meerut Mavericks to a T20 league championship, Rinku Singh has been appointed as the captain of the Uttar Pradesh team for the upcoming Vijay Hazare Trophy, set to kick off this Saturday.

Before the Duleep Trophy last September, Rinku ensured Meerut Mavericks would top the second edition of the Uttar Pradesh Twenty20 League in Lucknow. He scored 210 runs, including a 12-ball 39, with 15 boundaries and 11 sixes at a strike rate of 161.54, and took seven wickets, three of them in one over, at 11.71 in nine matches.

Rinku was captaining any team for the first time at the UPT20 League. It was a kind of audition for him. Uttar Pradesh’s selection committee led by Praveen Kumar felt the time is right and handed Rinku the captaincy. He replaces Bhuvneshwar Kumar.

“It was a big opportunity for me to lead Meerut Mavericks in the UPT20 League and I am happy that I could deliver. I really enjoyed captaincy as it allowed me to learn many things,” Rinku said on Thursday.

“I did try my hand at bowling too at the UPT20L. Present-day cricket demands a full package – a cricketer who can bat, bowl and field,” he said. “Now, I am focusing on my bowling too. As captain of Uttar Pradesh, I have got bigger role to play and I’m ready for this.”

A regular in India’s T20 squad since hitting five consecutive sixes for Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in April 2023 in the Indian Premier League (IPL), Rinku could be in contention, along with Venkatesh Iyer and Ajinkya Rahane, to lead the franchise next term. That is not on his mind now, he said.

“I am not thinking too much about the captaincy of KKR in the new IPL season. I am focused on my plans for Uttar Pradesh as I want my team to regain the trophy we had won for the first time in 2015-16,” he said.

Rinku, who finished as the highest run getter for Uttar Pradesh in the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy with 277 runs at a strike rate of 152.19, was the third highest run getter for the side in the first half of the Ranji Trophy with 157 runs. He said the 50-over event is a good opportunity for him to prepare for the future white ball cricket.

“I believe in God. I didn’t even think of being part of the Team India when I struck five consecutive sixes in the IPL last year. That turned out to be the biggest game changer in my life. Even now I feel that if God has decided something for me, I will get that surely, but at the same time, I also need to work hard on my job,” said Rinku.

His family struggling financially, Rinku’s fortunes changed when KKR bought him for ₹80 lakh at the IPL 2018 auction. In 2022, he emerged KKR’s leading run-scorer with a tally of 474 at a strike rate of 149.52.

Rinku has been equally impressive in the other two formats. In the 2018-19 Ranji Trophy, he rescued Uttar Pradesh on multiple occasions on way to aggregating 953 runs at an average of 105.88. In the 2021-22 Vijay Hazare Trophy, he registered four fifties and a hundred in six innings.

He made his T20I debut in 2023 and found immediate success as a finisher. Later that year, he made his ODI debut, too. With his part-time off-spin, Rinku picked up a wicket in his first over in ODIs and two in his first over in T20Is.