Chennai Super Kings, a team with a solid history of winning five championships, is having a rough start in IPL 2025, having won only one of their first three matches. To shake things up, they’ve brought in 17-year-old Ayush Mhatre from Mumbai for some mid-season practice sessions. This news came from a report by The Times of India.
Mhatre didn’t get picked in the IPL 2025 mega-auction that took place last November in Jeddah, but now he has a chance to join the Chennai squad if any of the players get hurt and can’t continue this season. He made his way to Chennai from Rajkot, where he had been training with other under-19 hopefuls at the BCCI’s National Cricket Academy.
Kasi Viswanathan, the managing director of Chennai, confirmed the invite for Mhatre’s trials, saying they were impressed with what they saw from him during his performances. He made it clear that there are no injuries prompting this call-up; they’re simply giving the young player a chance to show what he can do.
Interestingly, Mhatre had already been asked to come for trials back in November, just prior to the mega-auction. The last time he played was in February, during the semifinals of the Ranji Trophy, where he didn’t score too well, managing only nine and 18 runs in those innings. However, he had a strong season overall, being one of the key players for Mumbai with a total of 471 runs over eight matches, including two centuries.
In the Vijay Hazare Trophy earlier this year, he really stood out by scoring a crucial century in a match against Saurashtra, which helped him end up as the highest run-scorer for Mumbai in that tournament, racking up 458 runs in just seven matches with an impressive average of 65.42.
While Mhatre hasn’t yet played in a T20 match for Mumbai or any other team, the Chennai management seems to have taken notice of his talent. Currently, Chennai stands at seventh in the IPL 2025 points with one win against their fierce rivals, the Mumbai Indians, and two losses so far.
Something remarkable about Mhatre is that he set a world record back in December by becoming the youngest player to score over 150 runs in men’s List A cricket during a game against Nagaland. He achieved this at just 17 years and 168 days old, surpassing a record previously held by Yashasvi Jaiswal, who did it at 17 years and 291 days old while playing for Mumbai six years ago.
