Follow UsThe 2025 Indian Premier League (IPL) might have come to an end, but it’s time to immediately start building up towards IPL 2026 with a plethora of domestic state T20 Leagues kick-starting from June 4 (Wednesday). Among the lot, the most prominent of the leagues is T20 Mumbai 2025, which will see a host of big names, including Suryakumar Yadav, Shreyas Iyer and Ajinkya Rahane, partake in the competition.
However, big names aside, there will be a truckload of young, uncapped players in action, and scouts of IPL franchises will be keeping a very close eye on them. We look at a few players who will be tracked by the scouts ahead of the IPL 2026 auction.
A left-arm spinner and a left-hand batter of the Axar Patel mould, 24-year-old Atharva Ankolekar is one of the names to watch out for in the upcoming T20 Mumbai.
Ankolekar was a part of the Indian U19 side that made the final of the 2020 U19 WC, but he’s leveled up big time of late, and he played a key role towards the back end of Mumbai’s title-winning SMAT 2024 campaign where he took 4 wickets at an economy of 6.3, and played an invaluable 16* off 6 balls in the final against Madhya Pradesh.
He specialises in bowling in the powerplay with the ball despite being a spinner, and so every single franchise will be keeping a close eye on Ankolekar this season.
At 30 years of age, and having already played 8 first-class matches for Mumbai, Prasad Pawar is no youngster or newbie, but this right-hander has been on an absolute tear of late.
In 10 innings in 2025 across the Navi Mumbai T20 2025 and DY Patil T20 Cup 2025, Pawar has scored a staggering 368 runs at an average of 52 and a strike rate of 170. He represented the Vashi Warriors in the Navi Mumbai T20 2025 in March, where his last five scores read 53*, 69, 15, 68* and 37*.
Pawar is a middle-order and middle-overs enforcer, and he will undoubtedly be tracked closely by all IPL franchises. For all we know, he could be the next Shashank Singh in the making.
Don’t be surprised if Pawar ends up dominating T20 Mumbai 2025.
Another veteran finds himself in the list, and that’s 31-year-old Sagar Mishra, who played two first-class games for Railways a decade ago. A left-arm spinner, Mishra has been ultra-impressive in state-level tournaments in Mumbai, most recently impressing in the 2025 Navi Mumbai T20 Cup, where he took 10 wickets at an economy of 5.8. Across the 2024 and 2025 Navi Mumbai T20 Cup, nobody took more wickets than Sagar (27), and he did so at an economy of 5.90.
He is someone who might be on the radar of certain IPL teams.