Ayush Pandey had a breakout domestic season last year as he was among the top scorers in the Ranji Trophy, amassing 744 runs for Chhattisgarh.

Though he did not have a memorable start to the campaign in this edition of the tournament, having scored just eight and 27 against Rajasthan in the campaign-opener, the 22-year-old stamped his class against Mumbai as he scored a fifty in the first innings and followed it up with an unbeaten 117 to deny the domestic giant an outright win.

A soft-spoken Ayush admitted that with the wicket easing out, his target was to ensure that the left-arm spinners did not settle in, and he was happy to have executed the plan to perfection.

While he did not have a remarkable outing in age-group cricket, Ayush caught the attention last year, scoring runs in the Buchi Babu tournament and following it up with the purple patch in the Ranji Trophy.

“The Buchi Babu campaign gave me a lot of confidence, and I could build on that. This time, too, I look forward to building on this performance,” Ayush said, adding that the team learned from its mistakes in the first innings and bounced back. “We knew what errors we committed, and our idea was to bat through and through, and we could do that,” he said.

Ayush started playing the game quite early, as his father, a die-hard fan of Sachin Tendulkar, enrolled him in the Riaz Cricket Academy in Raipur. “I was passionate about the game and slowly things worked out for me,” he said, adding: “So far, I haven’t played much of white-ball cricket, but the success in red-ball cricket motivates me”.