There seems to be no stopping Devdutt Padikkal as his red-hot form in List A cricket continues. The Karnataka batter achieved a unique feat on Tuesday by becoming the only batter to amass 600+ runs in three consecutive Vijay Hazare Trophy seasons. DDP breached the 600-run mark in the ongoing VHT 2025/26 season in Karnataka’s round 6 game against Rajasthan.
Ignored Padikkal creates history
Padikkal narrowly missed out on scoring his 5th century in 6 VHT 2025/26 matches as he was dismissed for 91 runs on Tuesday. Prior to the game against Rajasthan, the Karnataka batter had registered scores of 147, 124, 22, 113. Devdutt, who made his List A debut back in 2018, scored 609 runs in his second VHT season in 2019-20 and finished as the leading run-getter. He then went on to score 737 runs from 8 innings in the 2020-21 season, including four consecutive centuries.
| Season | Innings | Runs | Average | 100s | 50s |
| 2019-2020 | 11 | 609 | 67.66 | 2 | 5 |
| 2020-2021 | 7 | 737 | 147.40 | 4 | 3 |
| 2025-2026 | 6 | 605* | 100.83 | 4 | 1 |
Padikkal now boasts of 2676 runs from 39 List A games, averaging 83.62 and has 13 hundreds & fifties each to his name. It has hard to fathom how a batter with such caliber has still not managed to get an ODI call-up despite performing consistently over the years.
While the delay in Devdutt’s call-up to the ODI team is justified, there is simply no place in the Indian team at present for the Karnataka batter. He could have fancied a chance of finding a spot in the IND vs NZ ODI series but couldn’t find a place, thanks to the returning Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer.
Padikkal has performed brilliantly off-late in List A cricket while batting at the top of the order, a position which already has a lot of competitors in the current ODI side. Yashasvi Jaiswal is already in the line, waiting for Rohit Sharma to hang up his boots in order to get more chances. Meanwhile, Gill has cemented his place as the other opener by the virtue of being the captain.
Padikkal could bat in the middle-order where he has proved his mettle – not in the 50-over format but in Tests. However, that unit is also crowded, given that the likes of Virat Kohli, Iyer, Rahul already having cemented their positions in the side. Therefore, it could perhaps take quite some time for Padikkal to break into the side. Or, he would simply have to wait and hope for a miracle from the selectors.
