Vijay Hazare Trophy is going to start from 21st December i.e. Saturday. Rinku Singh will take charge of the UP team. He replaces Bhuvneshwar Kumar who captained Uttar Pradesh in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy that concluded last week where they lost to Delhi in the quarter-finals in Mumbai.
This will be the first time that Rinku Singh will captain a state team at the senior level. Earlier this year, he led Meerut Mavericks to the UPT20 League title and in this he scored 210 runs in 9 innings at a strike rate of 161.54.
Before the first match of Vijay Hazare Trophy, Rinku Singh said that it was a big opportunity for me to lead Meerut Mavericks in the UPT20 league and I am happy that I could perform well. I enjoyed captaincy a lot because it gave me the opportunity to learn many things. I also tried my hand at bowling in the UPT20 league. In current times cricket requires a complete package, a cricketer who can bat, bowl and field. Now I am also concentrating on my bowling. As the captain of Uttar Pradesh, I have a big role to play and I am ready for it.
Rinku Singh has been made the captain of the UP team at a time when his IPL team KKR is considering captaincy options. Rinku Singh has been a part of the KKR team since 2018 and before the auction to be held in November for the next season, he was retained by KKR along with Sunil Narine, Andre Russell, Varun Chakravarthy and Ramandeep Singh. Rinku Singh said that I am not thinking much about captaining KKR in the new IPL season. I am focusing on my plans for Uttar Pradesh as I want my team to lift this trophy again after 2015-16.