Chappell, an advisor with the Rajasthan Cricket Academy (RCA), is touring seven cities across the country to hunt for a Twenty20 star for the Royals. He will pick out 24 young talents from all over the country to undergo a 10-day coaching clinic at the RCA, and out of those 24, just one lucky winner will get the chance to match steps with the big boys in the Indian Premier League.

Of the five shortlisted today, right-arm pacer Abhishek Singh, a 19-year-old right-arm pacer, is the local lad. The others — Naman Sharma from Ghaziabad, Gaurav Goel from Meerut, Bharat Awasthi from Kanpur and Ravindra Solanki from Bareilly — had all come to the Capital to try their luck and found it.

“This season only one of the 24 makes it to our team,” Chappell explained. “But this process will throw up talent that the players’ respective state associations can then make use of. And we might have another look at them for the next season.”

Chappell and bio-mechanist Ian Frazer’s contract with the RCA runs till 2009.

Chappell said that out of the 4,000 players that he has seen till now, a large majority has been spinners. “Most of those we saw, interestingly, were left-arm finger spinners. There were very few off-spinners and leg-spinners,” he said.

Chappell also added that around 10-12 other players will be selected for a six-month coaching camp at the RCA. The Australian emphasised that players should get accustomed to all formats of game and not just the slam-bang world of Twenty20.