Mithun Manhas has made the move from Delhi to Jammu and Kashmir for the 2015-16 Indian domestic season.
A native of Jammu, Manhas made his first-class debut for Delhi in 1997-98 after moving to the state in search of opportunities, and has been a vital presence in the Delhi set-up ever since.
The domestic veteran has made 9071 runs from 147 first-class games at an average of 45.81, including 25 centuries.
The 2015-16 domestic season kicks off with the Ranji Trophy in October, and Manhas will be in focus straight away as he is just 89 runs away from becoming the fourth entrant into the 8000-run club in Ranji Trophy after Wasim Jaffer (9759), Amol Muzumdar (9202) and Hrishikesh Kantikar (8059).
The 35-year-old batsman last played a match for Delhi in the second quarterfinal of the 2014-15 Ranji Trophy against Mumbai and bagged a pair in that game. He had a middling season by his standards, scoring just 260 runs in eight matches at 21.66, with just two half-centuries in 13 innings.
J&K have been relegated to Group C after finishing at the bottom of the Group A table last season, with 12 points from eight games with just one win. They had a slightly more successful Vijay Hazare Trophy, winning three out of five games, although they did not make it to the knockouts, and they ended their Syed Mushtaq Ali campaign winless after five games.
The team will be pitted against Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Services, Tripura, Jharkhand, Goa and Saurashtra in Group C and will open their campaign against Kerala on October 1.
Manhas’s announcement comes less than a couple of weeks after Virender Sehwag announced his move to Haryana. It is one among several such transfers, including Wasim Jaffer from Mumbai to Vidarbha and Pragyan Ojha to Bengal from Hyderabad.
