Indian Premier League fans were surprised Sunday when Royal Challengers Bangalore fielded a young leg-spinner against Sunrisers Hyderabad. He was debutant Prayas Ray Barman and youngest player in the history of the league. He is a standard 12 CBSE student too.
Barman’s age on the day was just 16 years and 157 days. The previous youngest player was Afghanistan’s spinner Mujeeb-ur-Rahman, who was 17 years and 11 days on the day of his first match in IPL.
Studying at Kalyani Public School in Kolkata the teenager replaced Navdeep Saini in Sunday’s match against SRH. He conceded 56 runs and went wicketless.
Talking to reporter his father, Dr Kaushik Ray Barman, said managing studies with IPL is tough but the leg-spinner has full support of the team.
Dr Kaushik added, ““(Virat) Kohli, AB (de Villiers) and (coach Gary) Kirsten are obviously encouraging him at the nets. Obviously, they have seen some potential in him to pick him ahead of the experienced duo of (Pawan) Negi and Washington Sundar.”
So far RCB has lost three matches in IPL 2019 even with world-class top order batsmen. In the opening match with Chennai Super Kings the team was wrapped out for just 70 runs.
The team was later defeated by Mumbai Indians and Sunrisers Hyderabad in subsequent two matches.
