Unmukt Chand signs up for Lancashire Cricket League

Former India U19 World Cup winning skipper Unmukt Chand has joined the Colne Cricket Club for the upcoming season of the Lancashire Cricket League. He has joined the club as a professional player. Chand has replaced Bjorn Fortuin in the team. This is the first time that Unmukt Chand will be getting a taste of the England club cricket.

Prior to Chand, there have been several legends of the game who have turned up for the same league in the history of the tournament. The likes of Shane Warne, Jason Gillespie, Andy Roberts and Viv Richards have played the league. Among the Indian players, former Indian skipper Kapil Dev and highly successful county cricketer Murali Kartik have been a part of the tournament as well.

Interestingly, this is not the first time that Unmukt Chand will be participating in a foreign league. He was recently seen playing in the Dhaka Premier League (DPL) for the Prima Bank Cricket Club. Chand was one of the top performers for the team in the season with 107 runs to his name in three innings at an impressive average of 53.5.

Chand had earlier gone unsold at the IPL auctions this year due to lackluster show in the domestic season. He was on the roster for the Mumbai Indians last year but found no takers this time around. In the 2016/7 Ranji Trophy, he even led the Delhi side in absence of regular skipper Gautam Gambhir in a couple of fixtures.

The tournament, though, was a poor one for him on the personal front. He could muster only 366 runs in the 12 innings that he played in the season. In the shortest format of the game, he had a bad time in the domestic T20 competition Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. He could only manage 64 runs in five innings.

He managed to get amongst the runs in the domestic 50-over competition though and had two fifties to his name. He then headed to Bangladesh for the DPL.