Murali Vijay

Murali Vijay (born 1 April 1984) is a former Indian international cricketer. He was a right-handed opening batter and an occasional right-arm off break bowler. He has represented the Indian cricket team and played for Tamil Nadu in domestic first-class cricket. He was a member of the Indian team that won the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy.

In 2001, Vijay started playing cricket at the college level before he was selected for the Tamil Nadu under-22 cricket team. He made his first-class debut for Tamil Nadu in 2006 and was amongst the top run-scorers in the 2006–07 Ranji Trophy, which was his maiden first-class tournament. In 2008, he was called up to the South Zone cricket team that played for the Duleep Trophy and later to the India A side that faced the touring New Zealand A team. He made his test debut against Australia in November 2008 when the team's regular opener Gautam Gambhir was not available. After a brief run in the side playing test cricket, he played his first ODI against the touring South African team in February 2010.

Vijay is noted as a good timer of the ball, who tends to play off his front foot and prefer his fore-arm wrists to play the shots. Known for his ability to bat for longer periods of time, he played mainly test cricket for India. After a start-stop initial few years, he became a regular in the Indian test teams after his call back to the side during the home series against Australia in 2013, in which he scored back to back centuries. He was one of the designated opening batsmen in the away tours, the highlight of which included the 2014 series against England in which he was the top run getter. Though he played his last ODI in 2015, he continued to play tests for India regularly. After a good series against England in early 2017, his returns diminished over the next two seasons and he played his last test in December 2018. He finished his career with 3982 runs in 61 test matches at an average of over 38 to go with the 331 runs he accumulated in 17 ODIs.

Vijay played for three franchises in the Indian Premier League (IPL) T20 cricket tournament. He represented the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) for seven season across two stints and in 2010 and 2011. He was also the top run scorer in the 2010 Champions League Twenty20, which was won by CSK. He had a short stint with Delhi Daredevils in 2014 before he was part of the Kings XI Punjab side for three seasons including the 2016 season as captain. He scored 2619 runs in 106 matches with two centuries in the IPL. He also captained the Kovai Kings side in the Tamil Nadu Premier League in 2016 and 2017. He announced his official retirement from all forms of cricket in January 2023. In a career spanning more than 20 years, he scored more than 13,000 runs in all forms of cricket. Provided by Wikipedia