There are cricketers who find the IPL early.
And then there is Raghu Sharma, a 33-year-old leg-spinner from Jalandhar who started serious cricket at 18, weighed 102 kilograms when he first walked into a net, taught himself to bowl wrist spin from Shane Warne’s YouTube videos, was told at 25 that he was too old for Punjab’s setup, played league cricket in Sri Lanka and England, drove to a temple in Puri when it all felt finished, and finally walked out at the Wankhede for his IPL debut for Mumbai Indians this season.
His is not a story about talent arriving at the right time. It is a story about persistence surviving every wrong time.
Raghu Sharma Age and Early Life
Raghu Sharma was born on March 11, 1993, in Jalandhar, Punjab, into a family of doctors and engineers. He is 33 years old, making him one of the oldest IPL debutants in the tournament’s recent history. He did not play serious cricket growing up, taking it up only after turning 18. India had just won the ODI World Cup in 2011, and that victory piqued his interest. He enrolled to study electrical engineering and started going to Burlton Park nearby for practice. There was one immediate problem. He weighed around 102 kilograms, and since he had not played any cricket until then, the coaches’ response was not very encouraging.
What followed was a complete physical transformation. He shed 30 to 35 kilograms through intense training, beginning as a pace bowler before a hamstring injury led him to leg spin. The pivot to wrist spin was not driven by coaching. He was self-taught via Shane Warne’s YouTube videos, mastering the legbreak grip, the wrong’un, the flipper, and the slider entirely on his own before any formal mentor took him on.
Raghu Sharma Family Background
Raghu comes from a family of doctors and engineers and was set to follow that path when he enrolled to study electrical engineering in Jalandhar in 2011. His parents’ names are not publicly disclosed, but the family’s academic background makes his cricket story even more unconventional. This was never the plan. Cricket was not in the family script. It was entirely his own decision, made at 18, pursued at 102 kilograms, and kept alive through a decade of rejections that would have broken most people raised inside that kind of professional environment.
Raghu Sharma IPL Price and Which Team He Plays For
Mumbai Indians secured his services for Rs 30 lakh at the 2025 Mega Auction and retained him for the 2026 season. He got his first taste of the IPL when Mumbai Indians brought him in as a replacement player for the injured Vignesh Puthur in 2025. MI did not give him a game that season but retained him for 2026. He was 33 when that season started. The retention was a statement of long-term faith from a franchise that had watched him bowl in their nets for years before ever giving him a contract.
Raghu Sharma Bowling Style and How He Learned From Imran Tahir
He started as a fast bowler initially but switched to leg spin to make his way into the Punjab domestic side and then the IPL. He idolises Shane Warne and Imran Tahir. The Imran Tahir connection is one of the most remarkable subplots in his story. While playing league cricket in Stoke-on-Trent, England, he learned that Tahir was also playing a game nearby. He went to meet him after the match, and Tahir took him to the centre wicket and gave him 40 minutes of mentoring, explaining how he bowls the legbreak and the googly. After that session, Raghu changed his action, which helped him with speed variation. Earlier he did not bowl a googly at all, but after that interaction he mastered it. His wickets in the second half of that England stint came directly from that conversation.
Raghu Sharma Domestic Stats: Ranji, Vijay Hazare and Sri Lanka
The numbers that made MI retain him despite never giving him a game are built across several continents. In 12 first-class matches, he has taken 57 wickets at an average of 19.59, including five five-wicket hauls and three ten-wicket match hauls, with a career best of 7 for 56. In 2024-25, he took 14 wickets in eight games in the Vijay Hazare Trophy at an average of 23.71 and an economy of 5.13, helping Punjab reach the quarter-finals, with only Arshdeep Singh taking more wickets for the side.
In Sri Lanka, playing league cricket in Galle, he took 46 wickets at 15.71 in six first-class games, with multiple five-wicket hauls. In England, he claimed 43 wickets in 21 games across Stoke-on-Trent. These are not domestic numbers. These are the numbers of a bowler who was actively getting better in the years when most Indian domestic players his age had already accepted their ceilings.
Raghu Sharma IPL 2026 Debut: The Moment at Wankhede
Raghu Sharma is finally set to make his long-awaited IPL debut for Mumbai Indians in the 2026 season, at 33 years old, for the five-time champions. The debut at the Wankhede, the ground he spent years bowling in nets without a contract, carries the weight of everything that came before it: the 102-kilogram version of himself at Burlton Park, the hamstring injury that changed his bowling style, the rejection at 25, the plane to Sri Lanka, the 40 minutes with Imran Tahir at a club ground in Stoke-on-Trent, and the morning he sat at the Jagannath temple in Puri and made a training schedule on the beach because he did not know what else to do.
Why Raghu Sharma Is a Name to Remember
In 2016, Harbhajan Singh recommended Raghu’s name as a net bowler for MI. The franchise called him for trials the following season, but he did not pass. A decade later, he is in their playing XI. That is not just perseverance. That is the rare kind of quiet faith in one’s own ability that very few cricketers ever manage to hold onto that long. Raghu Sharma’s IPL debut is not a feel-good footnote. It is the entire point of the story.
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.
