3 Vidarbha Pro T20 League 2025 (VPL 2025) Players Who Will Be Watched By IPL Scouts – Cricket.com

The Vidarbha Pro T20 League 2025 (VPL 2025) got underway on June 5 (Friday), with Nagpur Titans taking on Pagariya Strikers in the first match of the six-team competition. 
On a tricky pitch, it was 21-year-old Faiz Mohammad Sheikh who managed to make quite an impression with a 30-ball 46. 
As we witnessed in the Indian Premier League 2025 (IPL 2025), state league tournaments have become a factory of sorts for scouts of IPL franchises to raid and pick players. 
It will be no different this time around, and all scouts will be watching players in state leagues keenly as preparation for the 2026 IPL auction. 
Here we look at players from VPL 2025 who will be closely followed by IPL sides.
Aditya Thakare has become a very crucial part of Vidarbha’s red-ball set-up in the last few years, but the 26-year-old is yet to make a name for himself in the 20-over format. 
The right-arm seamer featured in four T20s for his stateside in 2021 and picked up six wickets at an impressive economy rate of 5.54. Surprisingly, he hasn’t played for Vidarbha since then. 
Someone who can make the new ball talk, Thakre has all the ingredients to become a powerplay specialist – someone like Deepak Chahar. 
Thakre is now more experienced and if he manages to do well in the VPL 2025, the right-armer could easily attract a couple of IPL franchises in the next auction.
Akshay Karnewar is an ambidextrous (someone who can bowl with both hands) spinner and a handy lower-order batter, who has played 64 T20s for Vidarbha.
The 32-year-old has claimed 62 wickets at an economy of just 6.5 and also scored 516 runs at an average of 14.33 and a strike rate of 132.64. 
Karnewar is an excellent defensive spinner and is also a match-up dream for any captain who is looking to bowl left-arm spin to right-handers and off-spin to left-handers. Karnewar is like 2 in 1. 
Sri Lanka’s Kamindu Mendis played a few games for Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in the IPL 2025 and did reasonably well. Karnewar was picked by Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in 2016 but didn’t get to play a single game. 
Karnewar hasn’t played a T20 for Vidarbha since the start of 2024, but a strong outing in the VPL 2025 could get him back into the stateside and also catch the attention of IPL scouts. 
Shivam Deshmukh is yet to make his debut for Vidarbha, but the wicketkeeper-batter is being touted as one of the players to watch out for in the VPL 2025.
The 24-year-old left-handed batter was brilliant in the Rani Suryamukhi Devi Memorial T20 Cricket Tournament 2025, scoring 146 runs across three innings at a strike rate of 141.8.
An Indian wicketkeeper who is a left-handed batter, Deshmukh could easily fit into any IPL squad. 
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