Prithvi Shaw signs with Northamptonshire

India batter Prithvi Shaw has secured a deal with Northamptonshire to play the remainder of the County Cricket season in England and also be a part of the Royal London One-Day Cup which starts in August. The 23-year-old is expected to join them at the end of the Duleep Trophy.

Shaw is part of a strong West Zone side which is tipped to make it all the way to the final of the Duleep Trophy scheduled between July 12 and 16. He may have fallen down the pecking order for India but remains a prolific run-scorer for his state side, Mumbai, in all formats of the game. Shaw hasn’t played any first-class cricket for six months but he did make a career-best 379 off just 383 balls in a Ranji Trophy game against Assam in January 2023.

The ability to score runs quickly is a big reason for Shaw’s rise through the ranks since winning the Under-19 World Cup for India in 2018. He had a stunning introduction to Test cricket, scoring a century on debutbut has since then struggled to deal with the quality of bowling on offer in international red-ball cricket. He played his last game as a first-choice pick for India in 2020 and only managed to get back when they had to send a second-string side to Sri Lanka in 2021.

Most recently, Shaw was part of the Delhi Capitals in IPL 2023. He went through a six-game stretch where he was unable to score more than 15 runs which led to his being dropped there as well. He did return later in the tournament and immediately struck a half-century.

Northamptonshire play in Division One of the English County Championship. They have won just one out of seven games so far and have seven more until the end of the season.

This will be Shaw’s first time playing domestic cricket in the UK. He will become the fifth Indian to be part of the 2022-23 season following Cheteshwar Pujara (Sussex), Ajinkya Rahane (Leicestershire), Arshdeep Singh (Kent) and Navdeep Saini (Worcestershire).

Shaw is a very attractive package in white-ball cricket, where hitting through the line of the ball is much easier. He is approaching 3000 List A runs at an average of 52.54 and a strike-rate of 123.27 with eight centuries, one of which is a double. Former India opener Gautam Gambhir, in 2022, had even tipped him to lead the country at some point in the future.