The Emerging Player of the Year Award has been known by various names since the inception of the IPL.
In its first year, 2008, it was called the “Best Under-19 Player Award” and in the following two years, the “Under-23 Success of the Tournament”. This became the “Rising Star of the Year” for the next two seasons, followed by “Best Young Player of the Season” in 2013 before settling on its currently nomenclature in 2014.
The award is eligible only for players with fewer than five Tests matches, 20 ODIs or 25 IPL matches to their name at the start of the season. And a player can only win the award once.
Only one foreigner has ever won the award – Bangladesh pacemen Mustafizur Rahman in 2016. This is not a surprise. Franchises are in the market for experienced overseas talent that has the ability to produce big performances on a consistent basis.
They save their experiments for cheaper, local talent.
However, the roll call of past winners includes some big names, including Mumbai Indians captain Rohit Sharma, who won the award back in 2009. He has gone on to become one of the most successful players in the history of the tournament, especially since joining the Mumbai Indians and becoming their captain in 2013. Under his leadership, Mumbai have won the tournament five times.
Another man who has since gone on to achieve great prominence is current Indian wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant, who picked up the award in 2018. He has since gone on to acquire a reputation as one of the most explosive batters in all formats of the game, the successor to M.S. Dhoni that Indian cricket fans have been looking for in their midst for years.
Winning the award, however, does not guarantee future success. Shreevats Goswami won it in 2008, months after he was a member of the Under-19 World Cup side. However, he struggled to break through for Bengal in domestic cricket and had to settle for the role of reserve wicketkeeper, behind Wriddhiman Saha. The closest he got to representative honours was an appearance in a Board President’s XI in a friendly against a touring Australian side.
Similarly, Iqbal Abdulla, who won the award in 2011 although he did play for India Under-19s, has never really fulfilled that early promise.