T Natarajan - India - Bowler

From almost being a coolie to a million dollar baby in the IPL, Natarajan's journey as a cricketer is worth the read. Hailing from the town of Salem, the left arm quickie learnt his basics playing tennis ball cricket. Yorkers bowled with the tennis ball changed to cutters with the seasoned ball but the impact remained the same on the batsman.

Touted as India's Mustafizur Rahman, KXIP picked him up 3 crores for IPL 2017 after his sterling performances in the domestic season and in the first season of TNPL as well. He played in 6 games in his debut IPL season and picked up 2 wickets. That was anti-climactic but was a good learning curve for someone so raw.

Natarajan's early promise was spotted by A Jayaprakash, a division cricketer. Natarajan moved to Chennai and the rest as they say is history. Natarajan missed the 2017-18 season of Ranji season owing to an elbow injury but was still picked up during the 2018 IPL auctions by SRH for 40 lakhs. However, he was benched for the entire season with plenty of experienced campaigners competing for the role.