On September 16, 2026, the BCCI named a 15-member ODI squad for the three-match home series against West Indies, and tucked into that list was a name most of India had never heard eighteen months earlier. Auqib Nabi, a right-arm medium pacer from Baramulla in Jammu & Kashmir, had earned his maiden call-up to the Indian ODI side.
He has not played his first match yet. The series against West Indies begins in Thiruvananthapuram on September 27, with the second and third games on September 30 and October 3. But the call-up itself is already being described back home as historic, and the story behind it is worth telling properly.
Who is Auqib Nabi?
Auqib Nabi Dar was born on 4 November 1996 in Sheeri, a village in the Baramulla district of Jammu & Kashmir. He is a right-arm medium bowler, bats right-handed, and stands 1.83 metres tall. He currently represents Jammu & Kashmir in domestic cricket, plays for Delhi Capitals in the IPL, and turned out for Surrey in county cricket in 2026.
A quick snapshot:
- Full name: Auqib Nabi Dar
- Born: 4 November 1996, Sheeri, Baramulla, J&K
- Role: Right-arm medium pace bowler
- Domestic side: Jammu & Kashmir
- IPL side: Delhi Capitals
- Nickname: The Baramulla Express
Just been picked, not yet debuted, what actually happened?
It is worth being precise here because the two get mixed up online. Nabi has been selected in India’s 15-man ODI squad for the West Indies series, led by Shubman Gill with KL Rahul as vice-captain. That squad reads: Shubman Gill (C), Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Ruturaj Gaikwad, KL Rahul (VC), Dhruv Jurel, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Prasidh Krishna, Gurnoor Brar, Mohammed Siraj, Auqib Nabi, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Naman Dhir.
This is his maiden ODI call-up. He had already been picked once before this year, for the recently concluded two-match Test series in Sri Lanka, brought in as cover for an injured Jasprit Bumrah, but he did not play a single match in that series. Whether the ODI call-up converts into an actual debut cap depends on how India’s team combination shapes up once the series starts.
Why did his father not want him to play cricket?
Because there was a safer, more conventional plan in mind for him. Nabi’s father, Ghulam Nabi Dar, worked as an English teacher and had originally hoped his son would pursue a career in medicine. Baramulla itself offered little in the way of cricketing infrastructure at the time, and Nabi grew up wanting to play football before the pull of fast bowling took over.
That combination, a skeptical household and a town with barely any cricket facilities, is the backdrop against which everything that followed has to be read.
How did he even train, growing up in Baramulla?
The nearest proper turf ground was over 50 kilometres away in Srinagar, and Nabi made that trip regularly to get access to real pitches and training. Before any of that, he learned the game the way a lot of Kashmiri cricketers do, playing tennis-ball cricket on local grounds before working his way into organised cricket through district matches and open trials run by the Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association.
One detail captures the gap between his circumstances and the sport he was chasing. At his first trial in Jammu, he discovered he needed spikes to bowl properly. He had turned up in sports shoes worth around 500 rupees. He borrowed a pair from a senior player to get through the trial, then borrowed another pair from a friend once he made the Under-19 side. It was only after his first match fee came in that he bought his own spikes, and by his own account, those shoes are staying in his house for good, because they were the first real step toward the dream.
Was he an overnight selection?
Not remotely. Unlike a prodigy who is fast-tracked through age-group cricket, Nabi was rejected at Under-19 trials for three straight years before finally making the squad in 2016. His senior List A debut for Jammu & Kashmir came in September 2018, his Twenty20 debut in November 2019, and his first-class debut followed on 3 January 2020, in a Ranji Trophy match against Jammu & Kashmir’s old rivals J&K vs Jharkhand at Ranchi.
He announced himself quickly once he arrived, taking five wickets for 39 against Odisha just over two weeks into his first-class career.
What changed in the last two seasons?
Everything. Across the 2024-25 and 2025-26 Ranji Trophy seasons, Nabi picked up 104 wickets combined, and it is the second of those seasons that turned him into a name outside Kashmir entirely.
In 2025-26, he finished as the leading wicket-taker in the entire Ranji Trophy with 60 wickets from 17 innings at an average of around 12.56, studded with eight five-wicket hauls. One of those five-fors came in the final itself, in Hubballi, played in the backyard of the tournament favourites Karnataka. Nabi took 26 wickets across the knockout stage alone, including 12 in the quarter-final against Madhya Pradesh.
The payoff was a first Ranji Trophy title in Jammu & Kashmir’s history, a fairytale that a fast bowler from a state with almost no cricketing pedigree had personally engineered.
What is the double hat-trick everyone mentions?
In August 2025, playing for North Zone against East Zone in the Duleep Trophy, Nabi became the first bowler in the competition’s history to take four wickets in four consecutive deliveries, a double hat-trick. It is the kind of spell that gets replayed on highlight reels for years, and it arrived at exactly the moment selectors were starting to take notice.
How much was he sold for at the IPL auction?
Delhi Capitals signed him for 8.40 crore rupees at the 2026 IPL auction, making him one of the most expensive uncapped players in that year’s sale. For a bowler who was still relatively unknown outside domestic cricket circles barely a year earlier, that price tag alone was a signal of how highly teams rated his rise.
How rare is this for a cricketer from Jammu & Kashmir?
Very. Nabi is only the third cricketer from Jammu & Kashmir to earn a senior India call-up, following Parvez Rasool and Umran Malik. Given how little cricketing infrastructure the region has historically had compared to the traditional powerhouse states, each of those names carries outsized weight back home, and Nabi’s selection has already been described locally as a historic moment for J&K cricket.
What does he actually bowl like?
A swing bowler with a reputation for discipline in line and length, capable of moving the ball both ways. He modelled his bowling action in his formative years on South African great Dale Steyn, which is part of where the “Baramulla Express” nickname comes from.
His numbers back up the reputation. In 44 first-class matches he has taken 164 wickets at an average of 18.71, with 16 five-wicket hauls and four ten-wicket match hauls, and a best of 7 for 24. His white-ball numbers are more modest by comparison: 56 wickets in 36 List A games at an average of 27.37, and 43 wickets in 39 T20s at 25.27.
That gap between his red-ball and white-ball numbers is exactly why some observers have questioned the timing of an ODI call-up over a Test one, arguing his game is currently better suited to the longer format.
Is he guaranteed a place in the XI?
Not obviously, no. India’s ODI squad for this series already carries three frontline seam options in Prasidh Krishna, Mohammed Siraj and Gurnoor Brar, with Nitish Kumar Reddy available as a fast-bowling all-rounder. Some analysts have pointed out that with Jasprit Bumrah expected to lead the pace attack in this format after returning from the Asian Games, there may not be an obvious opening for Nabi to break into the XI during this particular series, and he could end up spending it on the bench.
Whether that changes will depend on team combinations, conditions in Thiruvananthapuram, and how the selectors choose to manage workloads across a long home season.
What happens next?
For now, the story is the call-up itself: a bowler who was rejected from Under-19 trials three years running, who borrowed his first pair of spikes, and who bowled on dusty grounds 50 kilometres from the nearest turf pitch, is a training session away from a Team India cap. Nabi will miss Jammu & Kashmir’s Irani Cup fixture against Rest of India, which begins on October 1, because it clashes directly with the West Indies ODI series.
Whether his actual debut comes in this series or later, the road that got him this far is already one of the more unlikely ones in recent Indian cricket, and it is exactly the kind of story a state with almost no cricketing history needed.
Lucky Raina is a complete cricket writer chasing corporate dreams by day and cricket stories by night. Once a promising Under 16 cricketer, life took him down a different pitch but the love for the game never left.
