SMAT | Ashok credits it all to the hard-length bowler chat with Cummins

Rajasthan pacer Ashok Sharma, who is now the leading wicket-taker with 16 wickets from five matches in the ongoing Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, identifies himself as a hard-length bowler. That’s one big takeaway from his conversations with Pat Cummins at the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) camp in IPL 2022.

“He asked me a simple question: ‘What kind of a bowler are you?’ He explained: ‘All bowlers are different — some hit the hard length, some bowl good slower deliveries.’

“I told him that I can bowl hard-length deliveries effectively. He told me to back my strength irrespective of the format I was playing,” he said after his team’s two-wicket win over Saurashtra at the Narendra Modi Stadium B-Ground here on Thursday. “He asked me to work more on it. So, I worked on it and have been executing it well.”

Ashok followed up his four for 16 versus Uttarakhand with a four for 20 on what he described as a “hard-length wicket.”

“I didn’t have to try anything extra, just bowl fast on a hard length,” he said.

Bowling fast comes naturally to him. At 23, he can crank it up to 145 kph and even prefers rushing batters with his bouncers. The Tamil Nadu openers fell to his hostile bouncers — Tushar Raheja top-edged a pull to point, and Amith Sathvik could only slash to third man.

He accounted for Saurashtra captain Jaydev Unadkat with a yorker at the death, a delivery he’s “worked on” pre-season.

Playing only his maiden T20 season for Rajasthan, Ashok’s journey is nothing short of remarkable. A farmer’s son from the village of Rampura, he’s come up the hard way, helped by a sacrifice at home — his elder brother quit cricket because their father could afford coaching for only one sibling.

He served as a net bowler for the Rajasthan Royals in 2021, 2023, and 2024, before the franchise finally signed him in 2025.