For four days in Guwahati, India all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy’s contribution has been limited to a few acrobatic dives, 10 insipid overs and being a victim to the combination of a Marco Jansen snorter and Aiden Markram’s one-handed blinder.
Reddy had just completed a fruitless shuttle between three Indian cities. First, from the Indian Test camp in Kolkata to the India A side in Rajkot for two 50-over matches. Nitish scored 37 and picked a wicket against South Africa A. He neither bowled nor batted in the second match and flew out to rejoin the team battered by South Africa in Kolkata before moving north-east to the ACA Stadium.
The 22-year-old sent down 36 balls in South Africa’s first innings which lasted 151.1 overs. Washington Sundar bore the next-lowest bowling load in the six-man attack, with 26 overs.
In South Africa’s second essay, Reddy was summoned at the 71-over mark, signalling an immediate change in Tristan Stubbs’s approach after facing over 150 deliveries. When South Africa finally declared, Nitish walked away with figures of 0/24 in four overs, with no real answers forthcoming about his batting slot.
Since his breakthrough century at No. 8 in Melbourne late last year, the Andhra all-rounder has played nine innings at lower-order positions, and had five single-figure dismissals. When India attempts to bat time in Guwahati on Wednesday, Reddy will likely come out no higher than No. 8 again.
Earmarked as a pace-bowling all-rounder under the Gautam Gambhir management, Reddy is a man who has endured a spate of injuries. His international debut was deferred by a groin injury in July last year. Since the start of 2025, he has suffered quadricep and knee injuries, a side strain, and a neck spasm that limited his time on the recent Australia white-ball tour. Staggeringly, each time he has returned to the Test XI, without a real test of load or performance.
The Andhra prodigy once broke national batting records in age-group cricket before adopting a role with the new ball for his state team in the Ranji Trophy, and sliding down the batting order to manage the workload.
This isn’t the same wiry boy whose precocious nippy deliveries froze Cheteshwar Pujara on a wintery morning in Rajkot two years ago. Nitish would cramp up the Saurashtra stalwart’s on-side game before shooting down his off-stump with a vicious inducker.
Ravaged by injuries, perhaps Nitish cannot shoulder as heavy a bowling load as of now, even if the management stands defiant by its observations.
“…It’s more important to look ahead and see how we can fit him in to make sure that he does get game time and time to develop his bowling. We really like him, we think he’s a quality all-rounder,” assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate had told reporters during the West Indies series last month.
Except that mere playing time with no defined role is taking Nitish’s game nowhere. In 19 First-Class games since the 2024-25 season, he has sent down only 1,259 deliveries, translating to an average load of 11.2 overs per game. He bowled 10 here against South Africa.
His injury concerns are loosely addressed by the side, but are not considered a decisive factor even when they reduce Tests to a 11-versus-10 men contest on primary skills.
“The biggest limitation to what his ceiling could be is going to be his body,” Doeschate had admitted in Delhi last month.
“He is not the first all-rounder we’ve seen in this country whom that applies to; Hardik [Pandya]’s the same sort of player, where we don’t doubt their skills at all but whether their bodies hold up to Test cricket is a different matter.”
Stay updated with the latest sports news across Cricket, Football, Chess, and more. Catch all the action with real-time live cricket score updates and in-depth coverage of ongoing matches.
