Team J&K in Ranji finals: Stories from the dressing room

For the first time in the nearly seven decades since J&K made its debut in the Ranji trophy in 1959-60, the team entered the finals of the premier first-class tournament. For two regions bound by more than an ampersand, and long defined by conflicts and disagreements, this was the team’s biggest shared moment. On February 24, J&K will take on Karnataka in the finals at Hubli.

“We still haven’t absorbed how 99 happened,” says Sunil, still stupefied by their demolition of Bengal. “We had thought we would need 3-4 sessions to get them all out.”

Though if the team zoomed out the frame, it was entirely in line with how they have inflicted defeats on domestic powerhouses Mumbai, Baroda, Delhi and MP over the last two seasons. This J&K team fancies landing up at fortresses, and bombarding away at the ramparts, though in Karnataka with K L Rahul, Smaran Ravichandran and Karun Nair, they might find some resistance.

‘Trust your skill’

Sunil says those with whom he shared pictures of his home ground look at them with suspicion. “AI?” they would ask, looking at the magical hills and the clouds. He doesn’t explain anymore; he doesn’t blame them either. Jammu & Kashmir’s vistas simply resemble paintings, he told himself, and instantly felt a sense of calm. Not unlike what he felt when he had a chat with his pace partner Auqib about why he wasn’t ending up with wickets despite trying his best.

Playing cricket on pebbled dry riverbeds in Baramulla, Kashmir, the pacer with wrist skills similar to Mohammed Shami’s had calmed the left-arm speedster Sunil’s nerves with pristine red-ball cricket wisdom.

“Auqib’s input was small, but so crucial. He said he used to bowl with the exact same action and manner as he does now, but never got wickets then. He told me, ‘Don’t get flustered, trust your skill. Never drift from the basic line and length. You may not always get results, but then you will begin to,” Sunil recalls. Auqib has so far taken 55 wickets this season.

Jammu and Kashmir’s Sunil Kumar celebrates after the wicket of Bengal’s Sudip Kumar Gharami during the third day of the Ranji Trophy semifinal cricket match between Bengal and Jammu and Kashmir, at Bengal Cricket Academy Ground in Kalyani, Nadia district, West Bengal. (PTI)

It’s pretty much the advice that goes back and forth among the players, coaches and Jammu & Kashmir Cricket Association (JKCA) administrators. The goal: winning the Ranji Trophy.

“If Jammu & Kashmir cricket has to earn recognition, it must arrive on the national scene with a bang. And the ultimate is Ranji Trophy,” says JKCA chief, (Retd) Brigadier Anil Kumar Gupta, who took over in 2021. “It has sunk in,” he says of the team’s historic entry into the finals, but well aware that a decisive final step needs to be taken. “Fingers crossed for the final. It’s hard work of five years, where the sole focus was red ball cricket.”

Jammu and Kashmir’s Vanshaj Sharma celebrates with teammates after winning the Ranji Trophy second semifinal cricket match between Bengal and Jammu and Kashmir, at the Bengal Cricket Academy Ground, in Kalyani, Nadia district, West Bengal, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026. (PTI Photo)

Brigadier Gupta’s Army background and reputation for not compromising in the face of intense pressure proved crucial as he, along with now BCCI president Mithun Manhas, sought to steer J&K’s cricketers away from the pitfalls of unregulated T20 league matches.

They may not have been products of the highly successful Mumbai system, but Manhas and coach Ajay Sharma had played in some pretty solid middle-orders for the Delhi team back in the day when Ranji Trophy was hard-nosed and fiercely competitive.

Coach Sharma, it is said, could knock on the pitch and declare he would score a 100. They were red-ball cricket hardcores, born and raised in the billowing dust and grime and silence of Ranji cricket, where the sound of ball hitting the bat could be heard clearly without being drowned by noisy crowds.

Manager Hilal Ahmed recalls the moment they realised they had a titan in their midst. “We were at the airport last season, when Balaji (former India pacer L Balaji) walked up to (coach) Ajay Sharma sir, greeted him with great respect and called him ‘father of centuries’. It’s when everyone realised his domestic average had been 68… We all dug up his innings,” he says.

J&K’s two breakout seasons have had milestones of beating big-name teams at home, and overturning Bengal at home, completes their marching stomp into the final (PTI Photo)

That day, batsmen who had grown up watching T20 batting realised why Sharma enforced discipline the way he did, why their 100s were not good enough for him.

That was the cricketing culture Brigadier Gupta and Manhas wanted for J&K, which had for long played catch-up with the rest of the country after its years lost to insurgency and mistrust.

It would have been easier to take the commercial route and play T20 and T10 leagues, but Brigadier Gupta insisted that the state’s cricketers would go through the grind of red-ball cricket, tempered by four-day games.

“Our thinking was clear. We didn’t want to lose our Kashmir Valley talent to money and the short-term fame of these T20 entertainment games,” says Brigadier Gupta. “About 30-40 T20, T10 leagues were being played in the summer, where youngsters would try to hit big, play non-cricketing shots, on small grounds. They would be satisfied with the quick money. If we allowed seniors to play T20, T10, age-group (U-16, U-19) players would demand the same, and we wouldn’t have been able to stop them. But we were clear that J&K players needed to know they were good enough to represent India in Tests. We wanted them to have high ambitions; not settle for T20 money,” he recalls.

How a team was built

The team, Gupta says, was chosen with that clear-headed goal. Even captain Paras Dogra (born in Delhi, but a Himachali), was scouted out and observed for two years at Puducherry, before being brought to J&K.

Both Auqib Nabi and Sunil Kumar, too, needed to buy into this vision of playing the long haul. Both of them barely got any coaching in their formative years – while Nabi idolised Dale Steyn, Sunil learnt everything about bowling from watching Irfan Pathan, Zaheer Khan and Jimmy Anderson on TV. The two were brought under the wings of the bowling coach P Krishna Kumar, a no-nonsense former Rajasthan cricketer who taught them to add strength gradually, stick to technique meticulously and set themselves Test cap goals.

Nadia: Jammu and Kashmir’s Auqib Nabi celebrates after the wicket of Bengal’s Suraj Sindhu Jaiswal during the third day of the Ranji Trophy semifinal cricket match between Bengal and Jammu and Kashmir, at Bengal Cricket Academy Ground in Kalyani, Nadia district, West Bengal, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (PTI Photo)

Auqib had spoken earlier about how JKCA brought in fresh batches of the “real SG Test balls” that are used in Test matches. To prepare for the red-soil wickets in the south and west of India, red-clay wickets were laid on tracks as far as Katra. Participation in Chennai’s famous season-opener, the Buchi Babu tournament, was made mandatory and practice matches were played over four days.

When they began, like every state, cricketers from the cities of Jammu and Kashmir hogged all the early attention, with the farflung districts barely represented. “We went to the fringe areas. Selectors fanned out to Kishtwar, Poonch, Rajouri, Kupwara, Baramulla, Kulgam and Anantnag to locate talent, brought them to Jammu and took care of their accommodation,” Gupta says.

Many are sons of teachers. Some families needed convincing because they prized education above sport.

Opener Shubham Khajuria, born to a Jammu teacher, and Abdul Samad, a dazzling find from the coal mine town of Kalakote in Rajouri, became the team’s batting backbone. Unafraid of hard yards, they could bat long hours.

Abid Mushtaq, from the remote foothills of Bhaderwah in Doda (Jammu), may have started the faith-train when, before the J&K team defeated a star-studded Mumbai team with Ajinkya Rahane, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shardul Thakur, had boldly declared, “Hum unko haraayenge (We’ll defeat them).”

Yawer Hassan Khan, a young batter who came from the South Kashmir cricket hub of Bijbehara, told coaches he would bat at any spot as a floater. Arguably the best fielder in the team, he has been trained by coach Dishant Yagnik, also from Rajasthan.

While so far, all the attention has been on J&K’s pacers – Auqib and Umran Malik have earned catchy titles of “Pahalgam Express”, besides Yudhvir Sing, a spirited speedster, with a sharp talent for rousing speeches – the team’s canny hidden cards are the spinners.

Sunil Kumar says the secret to the team beating bigger opponents is their depth. “Anyone can bat at any position. We are trained to be flexible. If you lay out spin tracks, we have good spinners; if you have pace wickets, we have pacers. We don’t fear home advantage. Every condition suits us,” he says.

‘Cricket is our religion’

There are other bit-part characters, each with biting ambition. At least half a dozen players were brought in from the U23 team, with Manhas insisting that they would be coached as assiduously as the seniors.

Wicketkeeper-batsman Kanhaiya Wadhwan has the dash and decibel required for four-day cricket stumpers. His father, who runs a pharmacy in Jammu, had assured selectors that he would drill in the importance of triple centuries in his son.

“They started enjoying batting for long stretches on the wicket, which is what we wanted from our batsmen,” says Brigadier Gupta.

Auqib, too, had spoken about taking batting seriously. “Our lower order doesn’t ignore batting. We contribute 150 runs on an average,” says the No 9 who frustrated Bengal bowlers with his 40-odd runs.

Kalyani: Jammu and Kashmir’s Vanshaj Sharma with teammates celebrates after the team’s victory in the Ranji Trophy semifinal cricket match against Bengal, at the Bengal Cricket Academy Ground, in Kalyani, West Bengal, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026. (PTI Photo)

Captain Dogra, born in Delhi and based in Himachal Pradesh, is the bridge between players. He steadies the middle order, teaches bowlers not to rush for wickets and let things come to them. He also backs players like Abdul Samad who bat freely, and eases the guilt of those dropping catches. “Apne hi bandey hai. Ho gaya toh ho gaya (They are all our own… If they drop a catch, they drop),” he says.

Like every cricket team, J&K has its mischief makers. While Vanshaj Sharma earned fame this week for the straight six that took J&K into the finals, it was an earlier act that drew chuckles. At a crucial juncture, with J&K four wickets down and Bengal sensing an opening, the ball hit his bat. He pretended the ball had hit his legs instead and summoned the doctor, wincing throughout the act. The Bengal captain even asked for a referral, wasting a precious review. As soon as the review was taken, Vanshaj sent the doctor back and the dugout broke into chuckles.

Now, as they prepare for the finals, Brigadier Gupta talks of how the team stays together. “In my first talk, I told the team, cricket is our only religion. Off the field, everyone is free to follow their beliefs. Even as they kept rozas (fasting in the month of Ramzan), many cricketers volunteered to continue training at the camp. It is an individual choice; if someone wants to fast, we will facilitate that,” he says.

A Ranji win in the holy month would be perfect. Their festive goodies? “Abdul Samad’s fearless batting. He’s an entertainer. Say whatever you want, he’s a treat to watch,” he says.

Hubli awaits.