Nitish, Aniket tell us of depth in our talent pool

When it comes to bilateral international matches, no one seems to care, but random people come up to me asking if I am doing commentary in IPL.

- Sanjay Manjrekar

It's amazing how this tournament has struck a chord with the Indian fans, and they don't have to necessarily be cricket fans. Just over a week now in IPL 18 and the first big takeaway for me is watching the performances of young players, fast-tracked to the biggest T20 league in the world.

This young talent could have played a handful of senior domestic matches but they come and dominate IPL like a top T20 international star would. It's quite incredible actually.

Aniket Verma of Sunrisers Hyderabad had played just one Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy match and mostly junior level matches until now, but he comes out and plays two innings of high quality on a big T20 stage. After an impressive debut (36 vs LSG) he follows that up with an innings vs DC (74), which has an all-international attack that took our breath away.

He took apart both pace and spin, which included a convincing pull shot off Mitchell Starc and an attack on Axar Patel too. When Kuldeep Yadav came in to bowl, I sat up to see how he goes against a spinner who is a little different and much better than most spinners. As it turned out, he went on to do the same against Kuldeep Yadav too.