Dogra was optimistic ahead of the Irani Cup clash.
| Photo Credit: Imran Nissar

Auqib Nabi with the Jammu and Kashmir team
| Photo Credit: K. Murali Kumar

For the scribes who spend any length of time covering domestic cricket in India, there may be jaded familiarity with a line trotted out by players aspiring for higher honours when probed on matters of selection. “Our job is to just score runs or take wickets, selection will take care of itself,” is the common refrain.

A little over a week ago, with the announcement of India’s squad for the one-off Test against Afghanistan in New Chandigarh, a fresh reminder arrived that mere runs or wickets don’t always suffice. The nub of the subsequent critique directed at the selection panel from fans and former cricketers was this: do performances in the Ranji Trophy, the country’s premier First Class tournament, really matter while picking India’s Test team?

Recurring question

It is a question that crops up usually when a Test squad is chosen close on the heels of a Ranji season, and overlooks the standout run-getter or wicket-taker. 

You don’t have to rewind to the distant past to consider the predicament of Sarfaraz Khan. For a span of three seasons from 2019-20 to 2022-23 — the red-ball tournament was cancelled in 2020-21 due to Covid — the middle-order batter from Mumbai churned out runs like clockwork. In the 2021-22 season, Sarfaraz rose to the top of the leaderboard with 982 runs in nine innings at a Bradmanesque average of 122.75. It came on the back of 928 runs at 154.66 in 2019-20.

Yet, a call-up eluded Sarfaraz until the beginning of 2024 when he was drafted into the squad for the second Test of a five-match series against England. A handful of opportunities with mixed results later, the 28-year-old, a few kilos lighter but with his insatiable appetite for run-scoring undiminished, finds himself back on the periphery of the Test set-up.

The trigger for the renewal of this debate is the decision to name Gurnoor Brar in India’s pace attack for the assignment against Hashmatullah Shahidi & Co. With Jasprit Bumrah resting after the exertions of the T20 World Cup and the IPL, Mohammed Siraj and Prasidh Krishna are the other pacers in the 15-member contingent.

Gurnoor’s maiden call-up has seemingly come at the expense of Jammu & Kashmir’s Auqib Nabi, who has produced jaw-dropping returns over the past two seasons. After claiming 44 scalps in 2024-25, the medium-pacer propelled himself to the front and centre of his team’s epochal title-winning feat in 2025-26 with 60 wickets. Nabi’s overall career figures read 156 wickets in 41 First Class appearances at an average of 18.37 and a strike-rate of 38.1.

In comparison, Gurnoor has picked up 52 wickets in 18 matches (average 27.30, strike-rate 45.3) over the course of three years. Last season, the 26-year-old from Punjab played just two Ranji matches and snared a total of four victims.

Now, it isn’t exactly good optics that a fast bowler who has honed his craft to a fine degree on the Ranji circuit is ignored in favour of another whose numbers don’t quite scream for attention. To infer on the basis of these examples, however, that Ranji performances have entirely ceased to matter wouldn’t be accurate either. In this very squad, for instance, the emergence of left-arm spinner Harsh Dubey, whose 69 scalps were the most in the 2024-25 Ranji season, points to his exertions in domestic cricket getting due reward.

As chief selector Ajit Agarkar explained during a media interaction, Nabi, whose rise from the spartan surroundings of Baramulla is an endearing triumph of human spirit, hasn’t gone unnoticed. “You don’t necessarily pick a lot of seamers for a Test team in India. Nabi was close. There was a chat about him. He has had some incredible performances for Jammu & Kashmir,” Agarkar said.

What selectors mull over

Reassuring as that is for the 29-year-old from J&K, Gurnoor’s induction underlines that there is more to selection than plain numbers. Whilst evaluating fast bowlers in particular, the presence of certain qualitative attributes to supplement the prevailing dynamics of the pace attack is an important consideration for the selectors.

“It is not only about someone taking wickets. It is also about the balance of the squad and how players fit into that. It is not always about picking the best players. It is about picking players that play best with each other,” former national selector Jatin Paranjpe, who is head coach of North Mumbai Panthers in the Mumbai Premier League, told The Hindu.

By most accounts, Gurnoor’s ability to generate disconcerting bounce — he stands at 6’5” — at brisk pace ticks the right boxes. The first whiff of the Agarkar-led panel’s interest in the man from Muktsar came when he was drafted into the India-A set-up last year. “With Gurnoor, we have seen a lot of promise over the last season-and-a-half. He’s a tall guy with a bit of pace,” the chief selector noted.

If India is to return to the summit of Test cricket, it is imperative for Shubman Gill to have at his disposal a well-rounded pace attack, of the kind that Virat Kohli marshalled during his tenure. 

In this context, the urge to give Gurnoor a run-out is understandable, for he could be an ideal foil to Bumrah and Siraj. Bumrah, of course, is a cunning exponent of late swing with a bag of other tricks up his sleeve. Siraj can shape the new ball away from the right-hander, but relies primarily on the wobble-seam delivery to home in on the stumps. But both are at their most lethal when targeting the fuller end of the good-length zone. The likes of Akash Deep and Harshit Rana, who tend to move the ball off the seam, also operate at comparable speeds from similar release points.

Since the exit of Ishant Sharma in 2021, what India hasn’t had is a genuinely tall quick who can consistently unsettle batters with variable bounce. Sure, there is Prasidh, six Tests old, with the tools at 6’3” to hit the deck and cause discomfort. But the 30-year-old has been impeded by an erratic radar.

It is worth remembering that the absence of a lanky, menacing operator was keenly felt on South African shores in 2021-22. At Johannesburg and Cape Town, where India lost to fritter away a 1-0 advantage, South Africa’s speedsters leveraged their towering frames to draw more uneven bounce.

A different profile

Nabi’s strengths lie elsewhere. He is not very quick through the air, nor has he the physical gifts to extract considerable lift. His main ally is the capacity to find lateral movement without erring in line or length — think of his dismissals of K.L. Rahul and Karun Nair in February’s Ranji final in Hubballi. The J&K spearhead can also get the old ball to reverse, as he did to great effect in an encounter against Delhi at the Arun Jaitley Stadium.

For the moment, Nabi will have to stay patient. And perhaps believe in the cliche that his job is to keep taking wickets; selection will take care of itself.

Published – May 30, 2026 02:28 am IST

Fast bowling is viscerally raw. It is intense, unfiltered and powerful, and not only does it register in the onlookers’ minds, but it also evokes deep emotion.

Yet, for every stump that cartwheels, there is the lovely outswinger that kisses the bat and nestles safely in the wicketkeeper’s gloves. Fast bowling is bold, but also beautiful.

Top of the charts

No bowler in recent times has embodied these two aspects quite like Auqib Nabi. As Jammu & Kashmir clinched its maiden Ranji Trophy title last week, the 29-year-old from Baramulla finished with a chart-topping 60 wickets at an average of 12.56.

So penetrative was he that his strike-rate was an astounding 28.43. No bowler with 25 or more wickets had a number less than 30. Nabi also took a whopping seven five-wicket hauls, and four of those came in five innings across the quarterfinals, semifinals and final.

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For all the statistical grandeur, there is a pleasing reticence to everything he does. His run-up is not fiery; his pace is not express; he doesn’t stare down batters or indulge in complex vocabulary even while speaking about his expertise. Nabi is both arresting and simple.

But barely two years ago, Nabi was just another bowler in domestic cricket. He made his debut in 2019-20 under trailblazer Parvez Rasool, playing seven Ranji matches and claiming 24 wickets as J&K made the quarters for only the second time in history. However, in the three seasons after that, he accounted for just 22 scalps.

“I saw him first in the Buchi Babu Trophy nets in 2023-24,” P. Krishna Kumar, J&K bowling coach, told The Hindu. “He had a firm wrist, which is very important for a fast-bowler. Only then can you give good back-spin and release the ball better because the palm is behind the ball.

“But he was bowling more inswingers. He wouldn’t even bowl around the stick [stumps] to a left-hander. I asked him why. He said ‘Sir, I don’t have the confidence to bowl the outswinger’. So we practised, had some specific net sessions, and he learnt very quickly and improved drastically.”

In 2024-25, Nabi claimed 44 wickets as J&K reached the quarters again. But a maiden last-four appearance was thwarted by Kerala which secured a narrow one-run first-innings lead. The title-winning season, thus, seems like him wreaking vengeance.

“Nabi lands the ball on the seam, and that is why he has got so many wickets in Indian conditions,” Krishna Kumar explained. “And his movement is so late, and only two or three inches.

“I’ve been coaching for 20 years and I’ve played for 15 years. But I’ve never seen many bowlers moving the ball so late,” added the former Rajasthan cricketer, who played 70 First Class matches.

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This reflects in the manner of Nabi’s dismissals. He bowls a suffocating line, landing the red cherry consistently in that mythical ‘corridor of uncertainty’ to perplex batters. Of his 60 dismissals, 42 were caught behind, bowled or lbw.

Not a speedster’s paradise

The conditions under which Nabi has achieved this is equally noteworthy. Though India now boasts of a world-class pace attack at the international level, the domestic game is still not a speedster’s paradise. In the all-time top-10 list of wicket-takers in a Ranji season, there are just three pacers — Jaydev Unadkat, Dodda Ganesh and now Nabi.

Unadkat, in fact, knows this all too well. The Saurashtra stalwart, with four Tests caps, holds the record for most wickets in a Ranji season for a speedster — 67 in 2019-20.

“It’s not everyone’s cup of tea,” the left-arm pacer told The Hindu. “The weather is a big challenge. Ranji nowadays is not in the winters. It starts in October when it is 38 degrees in Rajkot. You have to last the whole season, play on different pitches, take wickets and win games. And in a country where to get an outright result, you always resort to turning tracks, being a fast-bowler is hard.”

Unadkat is particularly impressed by Nabi’s complete lack of stage fright. He is also delighted that Nabi has disproved, yet again, the theory that rampaging speed is a prerequisite.

“When I was in the reckoning for the Indian team, all I wanted to do was make the best batters play [the ball] all the time,” Unadkat said. “If I could do that, I knew I had the skill-set to trouble any batter. I see that belief in Nabi. He wants to get the best batters out. Some bowlers get into a shell if they’re bowling to bigger names. And if they’re bowling to set batters, the lines could be defensive. But in him, I feel it is always attacking.”

The recently concluded season was evidence enough. In an era where teams bat deep, 43 of Nabi’s 60 wickets were of those in the top-seven. The Ranji final was the perfect microcosm — K.L. Rahul and R. Smaran caught behind; Karun Nair bowled; and Mayank Agarwal leg-before.

Unsurprisingly, there is heightened clamour for Nabi to be included in the Indian team, but before that, he must manage the burden of expectations in the upcoming Indian Premier League, after being bought for an impressive ₹8.4 crore by Delhi Capitals.

“Once he plays IPL and is tested, there will be people saying ‘he isn’t good enough for the international level, it’s just the domestic’,” Unadkat said. “I hope he has the attitude where he doesn’t care about all those things.

“I was actually heartbroken for Anshul Kamboj when he played in England [Manchester, 2025], and people started judging him after one game. I know how difficult it is to come out of it because it took me 12 years to get another chance [after Test debut].

“The only thing that comes to my mind in order to excel in internationals is to be 100% all the time. The level of consistency has to be a little higher than domestic. Skill-wise, I believe he [Nabi] has whatever it takes. So don’t really need to push and do something different,” the 34-year-old added.

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Nabi, for now, is sleeping on a bed of roses. But Krishna Kumar is confident that he knows how to handle the thorns too. Nabi, after all, did not shy away from travelling all the way to Bengaluru from north Kashmir in 2019 to play league cricket and keep his competitive juices flowing.

Calm, sound, sorted

“He is very, very calm, and even if he doesn’t get a wicket in a session, he says, ‘Sir no problem, main apni jagah pe bowling karta rahunga’ [I will keep bowling in my areas]. Sometimes, the batters will also bat well and score runs. So you have to be patient.

“But Nabi knows his strengths. In the [2025] Duleep Trophy, he got five wickets against East Zone, including four in four balls. In the second match against South Zone, he got only one wicket. But there was no change in his attitude. He has a very sound mind.”