Mumbai: Punjab Kings’ vice-captain and prominent IPL batter Shashank Singh has decided to move from Chhattisgarh to Pondicherry for the 2026-27 season. “Shashank Singh and Prasad Pawar (Mumbai’s wicketkeeper-batsman) will be Pondicherry’s guest players in the upcoming domestic season. We will finalise a third guest player in a couple of weeks,” Cricket Association of Pondicherry’s former president P Damodaran told TOI on Sunday. “Yes, I’m quitting Chhattisgarh. I’ve taken the NOC from CSCS and am moving to Pondicherry from the 2026-27 season. I suffered serious shoulder and finger injuries (fracture on the right finger) last season, but the Chhattisgarh State Cricket Sangh didn’t support me at all in this phase. Post the season, they didn’t put my name in the list of players for the Chhattisgarh Cricket Premier League 2026, and my name was also missing in the Chhattisgarh squad which travelled to Bengaluru (Alur) for a pre-season camp. I asked why they didn’t put my name. There was no response,” Shashank told TOI on Sunday. “I was told that I only want to play in the IPL, and not for Chhattisgarh in domestic cricket. The reality is that just last year (in Feb 2025), I was adjudged as India’s best all-rounder in the white-ball circuit by the BCCI, when I was named as the recipient of the prestigious Lala Amarnath Award for the Best All-Rounder in Domestic Limited Overs Competitions for the 2023-24 season,” Shashank said. The 34-year-old all-rounder had struck 450 runs and taken 11 wickets in seven matches in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, and scored 188 runs in seven games in the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy in the 2024-25 season. Shashank is now focusing on becoming a proper white-ball all-rounder this season. “My body is still fresh. This is why I am focusing more on white-ball cricket, and taking a break from red-ball cricket for this season. I am a proper all-rounder. I’m focusing on bowling my full quota of four overs in T20 cricket, for both Pondicherry and for Punjab Kings in the IPL,” Shashank said. The veteran player was in the news for the wrong reasons recently after he and his father, Shailesh Singh, a retired Special Director General of Police, faced an FIR for alleged assault and verbal abuse of their cook named Vipendra Singh. Shashank has, though, denied the allegations. “I’ve been cleared of all the allegations,” he stressed. Shashank had played a key role in Punjab Kings’ run to the IPL-2025 final, scoring 350 runs at a strike rate of 153.51, including an unbeaten 61 off just 30 balls in the final against Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Having moved from Bhilai to Mumbai at the age of 16, Shashank played for the DY Patil team in Mumbai’s local tournaments. The all-rounder made his Vijay Hazare Trophy and Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy debuts for Mumbai in 2015. However, he played just three List A games for Mumbai, whom he represented till 2018. At the age of 27, he switched back to Chhattisgarh. From 2019 onwards, Shashank was a regular in the Chhattisgarh side across formats. In 24 first-class games for the state, he has scored 905 runs at an average of 29.9 and taken 16 wickets at 47.87 with his medium pace. In List A cricket, he has better numbers: 1,054 runs in 35 matches at 40.53 and 37 wickets, while in T20s he averages 25.55 with the bat. In the 2023-24 season, he became the first Indian to score 150-plus runs and take five wickets in the same List A game, a feat he achieved against Manipur.
