Getting back on track: The slow but steady progress of Kumar Kushagra

He arrived in the IPL with a ₹7.2 crore price tag but a more compelling all-format story is unfolding away from the spotlight.

There is something instructive about the career of Kumar Kushagra whose early life seemed to unfold at an accelerated pace. He was barely 17 when he scored a double century for Jharkhand in the Ranji Trophy, a teenager when selected for the under-19 World Cup, and only 19 when Delhi Capitals paid ₹7.2 crore for him at the IPL auction.

Kumar Kushagra continues to impress. (PTI)

By the usual measures of cricket's talent economy, he had arrived early. Yet the most significant phase of his development may be happening now, at 21, as he learns to make a virtue of patience.

His latest reward is a place in the India A squad for the tour of New Zealand, where he replaces the injured Rishabh Pant. It’s a massive step in a career that hasn’t followed the trajectory his auction price might have prompted. While the IPL has offered him precious little opportunity, domestic cricket has become the laboratory in which Kushagra is building a more complete game.

The evidence is difficult to ignore. In the just concluded A tour against Australia at Puducherry, Kushagra’s scores were 113, 46*, 10 and 1. In the Duleep Trophy preceding that, his scores read 55, 0, 22, 101 and 46. Two months before that came a 39-ball 78 and 26-ball 58 for Chota Nagpur Royals in the Jharkhand T20 Premier League. List A too wasn’t ignored, as Kushagra came in handy with scores of 36 (against Sri Lanka) and 58, against Afghanistan. The formats differ, but Kushagra’s underlying impulse is to find a way to score.

His first big statement came in the 2021-22 Ranji Trophy, where he made 266 against Nagaland. Soon, his razor sharp focus and bat speed started doing rounds of the domestic circuit. The IPL bought into that reputation when Delhi Capitals paid ₹7.2 crore for Kushagra at the 2024 auction, with three franchises competing for his signature. But then came the anticlimax. Three innings in his first IPL season yielded three runs. Delhi released him, and Gujarat Titans acquired him for considerably less. Across the next two seasons, he played just once.

Focus on red-ball cricket makes a difference

That trajectory could have corroded Kushagra's confidence. But his response was to concentrate on all forms of cricket. Ratan Kumar, Jharkhand’s coach, believes the turning point came when Kushagra began to embrace the demands of red-ball cricket more deliberately. Initially, he had been identified as a talented youngster capable of coming up the ranks quickly. But the challenge was also to turn that promise into tangible consistency.

“He is very intelligent, and his work ethic was very good,” Kumar told HT. “He used to work very positively both as keeper as well as batter, and with a lot of honesty.”

Their work together gathered momentum in the 2025-26 season. Technically, Kushagra already had plenty going for him—a strong base and good bat speed. What he needed was a greater capacity to extend his innings, to remain at the crease long enough for talent to become decisive.

A move from the middle order to No 3 formed part of that effort. It was a demanding assignment for a wicketkeeper, whose concentration and physical reserves may already have been tested by a long stint behind the stumps. But it offered Kushagra precisely the challenge he needed.

“We worked hard together,” Kumar says. “We spent a lot of time on batting, by playing extra balls with the sidearm. We deliberately switched to green wickets.”

The point was not merely to accumulate runs but to become comfortable in difficult conditions. Kumar wanted Kushagra to learn to survive when the pitch offered assistance to bowlers, and to convert that survival into substantial scores. “He can play long, he can score a hundred, he can survive on any wicket,” Kumar says. “He has the ability of top-level players. But you need to extend it.”

The results have been encouraging. Kushagra finished the 2025-26 Ranji season with 572 runs, including a century against Uttar Pradesh. In the Duleep Trophy final, his 101 from 132 balls for East Zone, in a 230-run partnership with Ishan Kishan, was another demonstration of controlled aggression.

The white-ball numbers are equally revealing. He made 368 runs in seven matches in the 2025-26 Vijay Hazare Trophy, averaging 73.60 at a strike rate of 102.5. In the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, he scored 422 runs at a strike rate above 160 as Jharkhand won the title for the first time.

There is a strong family support behind that willingness to work on his game. His father, Shashikant, initially regarded cricket as a waste of time. But his son's passion persuaded him to reconsider. He immersed himself in cricket books, studied the mechanics of batting and helped Kushagra work on extension and the transfer of weight, sometimes at the makeshift nets on the terrace of their Jamshedpur flat.

“The most important learning is that you have to play according to the format,” Shashikant says. “If it is 50 overs, then you will play accordingly. If it’s T20, then you will play accordingly.”

That philosophy now seems to be shaping Kushagra’s career. His IPL stint remains an unfinished chapter, and domestic success doesn’t automatically guarantee international opportunity.

His wicketkeeping, consistency and ability to transfer his form to higher levels will all face further scrutiny. But his progress offers a more useful measure of potential than an auction bid ever could. The next challenge is to make that progress count on an overseas tour.