Opinion At Ranji Trophy, J&K did it, against all odds. It’s a win
Jammu & Kashmir's passage to their first-ever Ranji Trophy final is the testament to a culture built from scratch, against geography, politics, and institutional indifference alike.
The mountains of J&K were never short of fast bowlers, nor of players with something to prove. They were short of people who believed — in themselves, and in each other. When Vanshaj Sharma sealed Jammu & Kashmir’s passage to their first-ever Ranji Trophy final with a six on Wednesday, the celebrations that erupted told a story statistics cannot capture. Sixty-six years — that’s how long J&K waited for a Ranji final. Since 1957, while Mumbai accumulated 41 titles and the cricketing establishment treated the north as an afterthought, J&K were building something quieter and more remarkable: A culture from scratch, against geography, politics, and institutional indifference alike.
Their rise is instructive because it was built without the usual scaffolding. Infrastructure remains scandalously thin — 20 districts, two grounds. Young Auqib Nabi drove 60 kilometres daily to reach a practice pitch. His bowling coach had a pitch built at a pacer’s home in Akhnoor so he could train through the off-season. These are not romantic footnotes; they are indictments of a system that will now rush to claim the credit. But the deepest battle was never against inadequate facilities. It was against something harder to fix. Bowling coach P Krishna Kumar knew that battle intimately — once paralysed by nerves facing Mumbai while playing for Rajasthan, he saw the same hesitation in J&K’s players. Discipline could be drilled, but the inferiority complex of small teams required something more. Last season’s one-run defeat to Kerala in the quarterfinals, rather than breaking them, cracked something open. It told them they were already at the door.
Their work was overseen by a head coach who understands redemption more personally than most. Ajay Sharma’s prolific career was interrupted by a life ban for match-fixing charges, a punishment he successfully contested before returning to cricket. He calls this final his rebirth. It is difficult to argue otherwise. The mountains of J&K were never short of fast bowlers, nor of players with something to prove. They were short of people who believed — in themselves, and in each other.
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