Auqib Nabi isn’t well-known outside of India, but for anyone with half an eye on the domestic scene in the country, his is a name in the spotlight.
Last season, Nabi took 44 wickets for Jammu & Kashmir in the Ranji Trophy, averaging an impressive 13.93. No other seam bowler took more than 35, and only one player overall – all-time record-breaker Harsh Dubey – picked up more.
He made it to the North Zone squad for the Duleep Trophy, and made history with four wickets in four balls against East Zone. This season, he has 24 wickets in four games thus far (again, the most by any quick) and his average remains under 14 runs per wicket.
Following his outstanding last campaign, there have been three red-ball series played by India A which attempts to serve as a finishing school of sorts for India hopefuls.
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These were the shadow tour of England alongside the Test team, followed by home series against Australia A and South Africa A. Ten different pacers (five of them Test caps) were selected across these three squads, and Nabi was not one of them.
A cursory search of his name on any social media platform will lead you to posts urging that Nabi cannot be ignored for India A selection any longer. Not an unreasonable demand: no one is calling for his Test inclusion, yet. The ‘A’ series are far more low-stakes contests in which to test a prospect.
Has Nabi been dealt with unfairly, or just a victim of misfortune?
The following chart displays a snapshot of specialist fast bowlers selected in India A squads since 2015 (the last ten years, as an arbitrary cut-off).
Thirty-two different players have been picked. There are two routes to examine the selections:
(a) Did these players all have outrageous Ranji records before selection?
(b) Did all those with outrageous Ranji records receive a call-up?
The answer to (b) is simple; no. One reason is evident.
Selection hurdle No.1: Weak opposition
Take the example of D Sivakumar, a name most are unlikely to have heard of. He was part of India’s 2008 U19 World Cup-winning squad (but did not play), and played for Andhra as a seam bowler who could bat a bit.
In five seasons between 2012/13 and 2016/17, Sivakumar picked up 115 wickets in the Ranji Trophy, averaging 17.6. Yet, he never got close to even the India A team, and in 2022 made his first and only international appearance for the USA in a T20I against the Netherlands.
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In four of those five seasons, Andhra were part of the Ranji Trophy Group C – equivalent to the current Plate Group – which for all intents and purposes was the second division of the tournament. Naturally, he played primarily against weaker opposition and so perhaps had slightly inflated figures.
Sivakumar’s 44 wickets in 2014/15 helped Andhra gain promotion, and his 13 wickets the following year came at 22.84, solid enough at the higher level. But that was still only one season to go off, as Andhra went straight back down.
Selection hurdle No.2: The nuances beyond numbers
Odisha (formerly Orissa)’s Basant Mohanty took 269 wickets at 19.3, across 10 Ranji Trophy seasons between 2012/13 and 2022/23. In the first eight of those, he took over 25 wickets seven times.
The closest he got to the Test team was an India A call-up for two 50-over games against New Zealand A in 2013; he took three wickets in two matches.
Mohanty did not have the Sivakumar issue: Odisha played mainly against stronger teams in the de facto first division, Groups A and B, for the majority of his golden run of form.
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But in his case, the various other caveats about conditions, bowling style, and whether a player has the skills to operate in multiple phases perhaps also come into play. It is these aspects that the selector’s trained eye comes into play. This of course can leave players’ fates victim to subconscious (and unavoidable) biases, but perhaps better the subconscious bias of an expert than the subconscious bias of a novice.
The net effect is the evidence that a player’s numbers on their own – to the depth and extent they are currently recorded – are rarely enough to guarantee progression to the next step on the cricketing ladder.
This point ties in neatly with attempting to answer question (a) from earlier, whether all those with India A call-ups had incredible domestic records beforehand.
The vast majority of them had solid records, but in most cases not as outstanding as Nabi’s recent numbers.
Did India A quicks outperform Nabi in domestic cricket?
Take a current Test bowler, Mohammed Siraj. His first India A call-up was for a home series against Australia in early 2017. In the preceding Ranji season, his first full season for Hyderabad, Siraj returned 41 wickets at 18.92.
Rajneesh Gurbani took 39 wickets at 17.12 in 2017/18, and was picked for India A to go to England the following summer.
Arzan Nagwaswalla had 41 wickets at 18.36, and Anshul Kamboj 34 wickets at 13.79 in the Ranji seasons immediately before they were picked for India A for the first time.
Clearly in some cases, one outstanding season is enough to catapult a player into the India A setup. Nabi’s record in 2024/25 was undoubtedly at par with the ones mentioned above.
So what gives?
Two things. One significant factor for a player like Nabi is age. This is not quite as simple as, for example, a policy of saying “players beyond X age will not be picked”. It is maybe more pertinently about when a breakout season comes, and if it is relatively late, whether there are explaining/mitigating factors.
In the above examples, Siraj was 23, Gurbani 25, Nagwaswalla 23 and Kamboj 24 by the time they put up those seasons. Nabi was 28 (now 29).
Every player’s development pathway is different, and of course they can peak at different times. But in a country like India where competition for every place is so fierce, the slightest bump can naturally cause selectors to look elsewhere.
When he was 23, Nabi showed promise with 24 wickets at 18.5 in the 2019/20 Ranji Trophy. But across the next three seasons, he only returned 22 wickets, and averaged upwards of 40.
From a selector’s point of view, this could well be a red flag, or at least something to keep an eye on. If it takes a player close to five years to work out their best method at the domestic level, how long might it take them to adjust to the next step up in quality?
The selector then has to decide whether a player can be afforded that time, especially at the expense of another one who may be just as talented. With pace bowling in particular, there is also the element of physicality, given how taxing the discipline is.
The pattern of India A selections over the last 10 years have largely erred on the side of picking quicks early rather than late. The only seamers to receive a maiden India A call-up after turning 28 in this time period were Sandeep Warrier in 2018 and Mukesh Kumar in 2022/23.
The difference between the pair then and Nabi now, is a body of work over a long period.
At the time he was picked, Mukesh was coming off three consecutive Ranji seasons in which he took 20 or more wickets, averaging under 25. Overall, he had 100 wickets at 22.57 in six seasons. That form continued the following season, after which he earned his Test cap.
Warrier never made it to the India Test team, but he had 44 wickets at 17.54 in the preceding season to his call-up, and 109 at 26.2 across six campaigns before that. As it happened, he only lasted for three ‘A’ series. Mukesh, it appears, may also no longer be in the scheme of things.
A similar case to Nabi, age-wise, has been Karnataka’s (now Goa’s) Vasuki Koushik. Not very quick but metronomic, Koushik only made his first-class debut aged 27 in 2019.
In each of the last three full seasons (since 2022), he has picked up 20 wickets at an average under 20. But now 33, natural concerns over his ability to stay fit and whether he may decline soon make him an unattractive option.
An additional point against Nabi is that he has not yet played in the IPL, so selectors have not had the chance to see him tested against genuine international-quality players (albeit in a different format).
Selection hurdle No.3: Attributes over record
Selection for India A has also relied to an extent on picking players for certain attributes, rather than purely the domestic records themselves. Since 2022, Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes in England have at times been criticised by fans for going too far down this route, nearly disregarding County Championship performances entirely.
In the recent past, this has been reflected in the selections of Gurnoor Brar, Yash Thakur and Harshit Rana; tall, strong, broad-shouldered quicks who can really bang the ball into the surface.
Umran Malik was fast-tracked to the A setup for his pace, and India invested in Ankit Rajpoot and Navdeep Saini for extended periods for similar reasons. Nagwaswalla, Khaleel Ahmed, Barinder Sran and Yash Dayal are among those to perhaps be given some leeway for being left-arm pacers.
As he admitted last week, Nabi’s main strength remains his ability to swing the ball both ways. He also has the ability to move it up front, and reverse it when it gets older. He even impressed India international Arshdeep Singh at the Duleep Trophy: “This lad is special, the ball comes out of his hand really nicely.”
The most genuine ‘swing’ bowlers playing for India A in the recent past have been Shardul Thakur and Tushar Deshpande, who were first picked when they were much younger (23 and 24 respectively). So there would be a baseline level of close knowledge about them in the national setup, that led to recalls later down the line.
Going by all the evidence of the last ten years, the chances of Nabi earning a call-up, even given his stellar record, are slim. It is true that there is little more he can do in terms of performance, but other factors exist which may mean even that is not enough.
This is not to say it is the end of the road for him.
He still dreams of wearing the India whites, as he should. It is often the pig-headedness of professional athletes that can push them ahead, that refusal to believe something is over simply because the odds say so.
After all, there are exceptions to every rule.
Image credit: Instagram / auqib_nabi
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