Meet this guy, Kamran Khan who played for Rajasthan Royals in the second edition of IPL is yet to play any domestic games. He represented Rajasthan Royals in 9 games taking 9 wickets. He is one such example of cricketers making their way into IPL without playing in the Ranji Trophy.
Let’s see what worked in his favour which earned him this call-up:
  1. He had a raw talent of generating lethal pace. Coming from a very poor background, he had to work very hard to play the game. Son of a woodcutter, he had that ability to bowl consistently at 140 kmph which is a big taboo in India and he was picked because of his innate ability to bowl fast.
  2. He had the opportunity combined with luck. There might be many players much talented than him but as luck would have it, opportunity knocked his door and he was hand picked by Rajasthan’s bowling coach.
  3. He had the right people at the right time. It is one of those moments where in even you don’t believe that life will change that dramatically within moments. He was lucky enough to have a mentor like Shane Warne and Rajasthan Royal’s whole team which always encouraged raw talents.
Hence, there is no straight forward way of playing into IPL before you play any domestic game. We have had examples in the past like Krunal Pandya, M Ashwin, P Tambe, Cariappa etc. who were picked by their respective franchise just because they had something unique in them which is the only way to scale up and survive in the highly competitive league such as IPL.
Either develop something unique in you, display that uniqueness to the right people at the right time, grab the opportunity, try and open that door by working hard and yes, you can make it pretty easily.
Easier said than done though.