A mix of youth and experience make up the season's best

India's domestic season that kicked off in August with the Duleep Trophy - played with the pink ball for the first time - drew to a close on March 29, with Tamil Nadu emerging winners of the Deodhar Trophy. They completed a phenomenal season, in which they also reached the semi-finals of the Ranji Trophy and won the Vijay Hazare Trophy, the domestic 50-over competition. ESPNcricinfo picks out five players who sparkled across formats this season:

Could he have forced his way into national reckoning for a spot in India's Champions Trophy squad, much like he did in 2013, as a specialist batsman? That Tamil Nadu achieved the double of Vijay Hazare and Deodhar Trophy titles was down to his batting brilliance. He amassed 854 runs in 12 innings - the fourth highest in a List A season in India. It also included two centuries in two finals, the first of which resulted in TN clinching the Vijay Hazare Trophy for a record fifth time. Karthik's form wasn't as prolific in the Ranji Trophy - he made 704 runs in 10 matches - but it helped Tamil Nadu into the semi-finals.

The culmination of his first-class exploits resulted in a Test call-up and an unlikely debut in the season-ending fourth Test against Australia in Dharamsala, where he picked up four wickets. The eight first-class games he played in the 2016-17 Ranji Trophy are the most he's played in a single season since making his debut in October 2014. While UP fared poorly and just managed to avoid being relegated, Kuldeep's performances stood out. Along with his 35 wickets in eight matches, including two five-fors, he also top-scored for the side with 466 runs in 13 innings, including a maiden first-class century. Having not been a first-choice pick in UP's XI because of the presence of Piyush Chawla, Kuldeep forced his way in by topping the wicket-takers' chart (17 wickets) in the pink-ball Duleep Trophy, the season's curtain-raiser.

No seamer had bowled more overs or picked up more wickets than Aswin Crist across the Ranji Trophy, the 50-over Vijay Hazare Trophy, and the 20-over Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy this season. Playing only his fourth domestic season, Crist was at the forefront of Tamil Nadu's rise, claiming 60 wickets in 405.4 overs at an average of 23. His 6 for 31 wiped out Karnataka for 88 on a green Visakhapatnam surface, and propelled his state into the Ranji semi-finals. He finished as Tamil Nadu's second highest wicket-taker in the Ranji Trophy with 35 scalps and followed it with a chart-topping 20 wickets in the Vijay Hazare Trophy. Crist's breakthrough season culminated in a call-up to the India Under-23 squad for ACC Emerging Players' tournament in Bangladesh.

Hooda had only three centuries before the start of the 2016-17 Ranji season. He scored those many in his first four innings alone this season, including an unbeaten 293 as captain against Punjab at the Feroz Shah Kotla. Hooda's effort was the second-highest individual score for Baroda, after Gul Mohammad's 319 in the 1946-47 final. In all, he scored 789 runs in 13 innings in the Ranji Trophy, but it was not enough to carry Baroda into the knockouts. Hooda's 302 runs in eight innings in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, however, ensured Baroda progressed to the semi-finals. In the Inter-State T20s, he also showed why he had been nicknamed "Hurricane" with a 48-ball hundred against Gujarat.

The Jharkhand vice-captain proved there was more to his side's batting stocks than just MS Dhoni and Saurabh Tiwary. His aggregate of 890 in 10 matches coincided with Jharkhand's entry to the Ranji Trophy semi-finals for the first time. He also upstaged the previous record held by Saurabh Tiwary (854) in 2012-13 for most runs by a Jharkhand batsman in a Ranji season. He carried that form into the Vijay Hazare Trophy, scoring 279 runs in eight matches at 55.80, including a century against Railways and a half-century. The reward for his consistency was a berth in India A's squad for the Deodhar Trophy.