India batter Prithvi Shaw has secured a deal with Northamptonshire to play the remainder of the County Cricket season in England and also be a part of the Royal London One-Day Cup which starts in August. The 23-year-old is expected to join them at the end of the Duleep Trophy.
Shaw is part of a strong West Zone side which is tipped to make it all the way to the final of the Duleep Trophy scheduled between July 12 and 16. He may have fallen down the pecking order for India but remains a prolific run-scorer for his state side, Mumbai, in all formats of the game. He hasn’t played any first-class cricket in six months but he did make a career-best 379 off just 383 balls in a Ranji Trophy game against Assam in January 2023.
The ability to score runs quickly is a big reason for Shaw’s rise through the ranks since winning the Under-19 World Cup for India in 2017. He had a stunning introduction to Test cricket, scoring a century on debut, but has since then struggled to deal with the quality of bowling on offer in international red-ball cricket. He played his last game as a first-choice pick for India in 2020 and only managed to get back when they had to send a second-string side to Sri Lanka in 2021.
Most recently, Shaw was part of the Delhi Capitals in IPL 2023. He went through a six-game stretch where he was unable to score more than 15 runs which led to his being dropped there as well. He did return later in the tournament and immediately struck a half-century.
Northamptonshire play in Division One of the English County Championship. They have won just one out of seven games so far and have seven more until the end of the season.
Shaw will become the fourth Indian player to take part in the English domestic season following Cheteshwar Pujara (Sussex), Ajinkya Rahane (Leicestershire) and Arshdeep Singh (Kent).
He is a very attractive package in white-ball cricket. With little in the way of sideways movement to deal with, Shaw is approaching 3000 List A runs at an average of 52.54 and a strike-rate of 123.27 with eight centuries, one of which is a double. Former India opener Gautam Gambhir, in 2022, had even tipped him to be lead the country at some point in the future.
Source: ESPN Crickinfo