Aniket Verma: SRH's Bhopal find with big six-hitting dreams

March 22 was a night of visualisation for Aniket Verma. Earlier that day, he'd been informed that he was going to start the season in Sunrisers Hyderabad's playing XII. Not surprisingly, sleep eluded the 23-year-old as his mind put him in different hypothetical match situations and he thought of ways to make it count.

Capitalising on opportunities has been the theme of Aniket's rise. Last year he found himself on the radar of an IPL side following his returns in the Madhya Pradesh Premier League in 2024 - another state T20 league where scouts tend to spend their "off-season". Aniket's 273 runs in six innings, which included a 32-ball 100 and 25 sixes in total, represented the best tally for runs and sixes in the league, and earned him a trial with SRH ahead of the mega auction.

When the trial came around, Aniket made the opportunity count.

"First in the PowerPlay, we were told to score 65 in 6 overs," he recalled to Cricbuzz. "We had to do it in pairs and if we got out, we'd have to sit out of the simulation. We achieved that easily. In the second scenario, we were told to score 85+ in 8 overs. We got that in 4 overs. They'd asked us to play the entire six overs (in the first scenario) and I made 72-odd in that. In the second one, I scored 64 out of the 85."

This was a head-turning effort that SRH just couldn't ignore, and they bought him for his base price of INR 30 Lakh in the auction. The sleepless night before the RR game was followed by an evening spent in the dugout watching SRH's top-order make jaws drop like it was 2024. But with 10 balls to go in the innings, his moment came. Aniket walked out with a feeling of gratitude coursing through him instead of nervousness.

"I was just happy that I gave my chachu (paternal uncle) this moment that he can feel proud of," Aniket says.

Amit Verma, Aniket's chachu, had an unexplainable feeling too, watching his nephew take strike and smash a six on the second ball he faced - a sense of deja vu from all the years of driving Aniket around for club and divisional matches where he swung his bat around unabashedly.

Aniket lost his mother when he was a little boy and had since lived with Amit in Bhopal. "Even when he was six months old, among all the toys laid out for him, he would go pick the bat and ball," Amit says. "When other relatives used to visit and see this, they would joke that maybe he'll go on to become a cricketer."

Love for the sport grew on Aniket, but the means to find formal coaching was not easy in a tough financial situation. Amit, however, matched Aniket's determination to play the sport, and took it upon himself to make ends meet without compromising the dream.

"When I started playing cricket, people in my family were not supportive. We were not strong financially," Aniket offers. "It was my uncle who used to support me. He liked cricket too and he saw that even I was interested in it. So he told me, 'You play, I am with you. You do whatever you want, I am with you. Don't worry about anything.' So he supported me in everything, everywhere. Even if he couldn't fulfil his own needs, he would fulfil mine."

This level of commitment led a 10-year-old Aniket to Ankur cricket academy in Bhopal where coach Jyoti Prakash Tyagi took him under his wing. Amit drove his nephew 13 kilometres one way each day while also juggling his day job. When he wasn't around, Aniket would cycle all the way, wrapping up his warm-up even before stepping onto the ground. From the very beginning, Tyagi felt Aniket stood out among his peers in many ways.

"There was a match in Ankur league, I scored 256," Aniket remembers. "After that game Jyoti sir told me that I'll score 400 one day. He didn't say well played. He just said you'll score 400 one day."

Tyagi's premonition was not mere lip service. It was confidence that came from watching the youngster pack a punch like no one else in his age group did. "The power with which he hit sixes... a kid of 11-12 years doesn't have so much power in his hands, so him hitting those big sixes was a big deal. He had exceptional power that was god-gifted," Tyagi says.

Aniket was consistent as he climbed up through age-group cricket, impressing Tyagi with repeated big scores in inter-division matches. His uncle Amit felt the results came from Aniket's single-minded focus on the sport. "He (Aniket) had no interest in anything else. I've seen other kids of his age, some take interest in watching TV or playing another sport or watching movies. But Aniket had nothing else in his mind," Amit says.

For his part, Amit continued to leave no stone unturned. Aniket was 15 when he once had to travel to Jabalpur for a division game. Amit bought him a phone even though he didn't have the money for it, taking small loans from several friends which he then repaid over time.

Aniket's linear upward progression through the years was soon met by the covid-19 pandemic, but it didn't alter the trajectory of his journey. In fact, it led to an unexpected boost to a crucial facet of his game. With Ankur academy in the heart of Bhopal, it couldn't function fully during lockdown. So several cricketers from the academy, including 2021-22 Ranji-winning captain Aditya Shrivastava and Aniket, were sent to practice at Faith Cricket Club on the outskirts of the city.

"A lot of help for my power game came from Faith Cricket Club," Aniket reveals. "Because their ground is almost like an international venue and the centre wicket was always available to us whenever we needed to practice. From that I got to know what kind of shots I have and what my range is. I know what I can clear." Aniket would then watch recordings of his hitting sessions to figure out where he was falling short, where the body balance was working out and where his head was falling over, so that he could course-correct.

He continued to build his game at the academy, and soon enough, turned his coach's prediction into reality. "Two years ago I scored 400 (in a four-day inter-division match) against Chambal. When I made that 400, I got a call from (Tyagi) sir saying, 'I told you, you'll make this,'" Aniket says.

From that knock, Aniket remembers something more crucial to the way he plays, and perhaps what SRH signed him up for. "I hit 41 fours and 16 sixes in that innings," he beams.

The IPL franchise has opened the doors for him to watch and learn from arguably one of the best six-hitters in the game, Heinrich Klaasen. Having spent a lot of time watching videos of the South African's batting, Aniket went straight to him for a masterclass.

"I spoke to Klaasen about his game and how he hits sixes with such a strong base and without losing his position (shape) and he told me about it. He spoke to me in detail and even during the match we were talking about how to attack balls of different lengths, he shared all of it with me," Aniket says.

Among Indian batters, Aniket has looked up to Hardik Pandya, and has pointed batting questions for the MI captain when they cross paths. "When I meet Hardik, I'll ask him about his bat flow," Aniket says. It's an opportunity that will present itself twice in the space of six days in Mumbai and Hyderabad in mid-April.

Amit was once again at the venue on March 27, where Aniket gave a longer demo of what he is capable of as a finisher. After 7 (3) against RR, he went 36 (13) in the defeat to LSG, with 30 of his runs coming in sixes.

"I want to hit the most sixes this season," he says with a cheeky smile, talking of his dream for IPL 2025. He has already hit six of them - the same tally as Travis Head and Ishan Kishan after the first two games of the season. SRH will like what they've seen so far from their scouted pick, and might just give him the stage to chase his six-hitting dreams.