Jitesh Sharma

Hailing from Amaravati, Maharashtra, Jitesh Sharma is a right-handed wicket-keeper batter. Born on October 22, 1993, and broke into the Vidarbha side in the 2013-14 season of the Vijay Hazare Trophy (VHT) based on his strong performances in the Cooch Behar Trophy. 

Sharma made his List-A debut against Rajasthan at Jaipur in Feb 2014. He played at the top order for the first few seasons for Vidarbha. However, the turning point came in Sharma's career when he had an excellent outing in the 2015-16 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (SMAT). The Amaravati-based batter piled up 343 runs with a strike rate of 143 with one century and a couple of half-centuries. The impressive outing in SMAT caught the eye of the Mumbai Indians (MI) scouting unit, and they picked up Jitesh in the 2016 IPL auction at the price of INR 10 lakhs.

In the 2015-16 Ranji Trophy season, the wicketkeeper-batter made his debut for Vidarbha but had a pretty ordinary outing with only 180 runs in 7 Matches. 

In the recently concluded SMAT 2022, Jitesh Sharma was one of the most consistent batters in the competition as he took his game to another level. He scored 214 runs from 8 matches with an average of 53.20 and a mind-blowing strike rate of 235.16, and he displayed great six-hitting skills in the competition. So after that impressive outing in SMAT, many scouting teams got their radar on the wicket-keeper batter. So in the 2022 IPL auction, Jitesh Sharma was picked up by the Punjab Kings(PBKS) at the base price of 20 lakhs.

(As of March 2022)