LUCKNOW: It was Upendra Singh Yadav’s unbeaten double hundred (off 239 balls) with three partnerships for the seventh, eighth and ninth wickets in the Ranji Trophy Group B match against Mumbai in 2020, which drew IPL selectors’ attention towards the Uttar Pradesh wicketkeeper-batsman.
Just two months before this match, the junior clerk in the engineering department of North Eastern Railway’s (NER) Lucknow division had hammered an unbeaten 70 off 41 balls (4 fours, 5 sixes) to power Uttar Pradesh to a five-wicket win over Tamil Nadu in a Group B match of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy T20 cricket tournament in November 2019.
