When Harshit Rana stood in despair, halfway through this 22-yard field of horror, watching another six soar off his bowling in Adelaide, Shubman Gill sprinted towards him and wrapped an arm of consolation around his shoulders. Only the hardest heart would not worry for the young fast bowler who has endured so much ridicule and trolling in social media over the past two games and now finds himself buried under an avalanche of mockery at the beginning of a third. Yet, for all the pity for a 23-year-old prematurely thrust into international cricket evokes, the questions to Rana, as well as the men that picked and trusted him, are numerous.
Some of them are fundamental. Like the doubts about his biggest strength. Reasonably tall and muscular, he burst forth with the reputation of a hit-the-deck practitioner. Whether he really is one, or rather he is perceived to be one, is a different narrative altogether. But if it indeed is his piece de resistance, he needs grooming. He is not sharp, skiddy, or precise, leave alone blessed with the covetous knack of moving the ball, to make a living out of hard lengths. He is not frighteningly tall to let the ball leap off the surface either.
But he swears on his gift to bowl back of good length, even short, to hustle batsmen as the best ones do. When the modest ones do, the results are often disastrous. His default method in this series, or whenever he gets the ball, is to bounce out batsmen. He plans and sets fields accordingly. For instance, energised after exiting Matthew Short with a short ball, a case of batsman mishitting rather than the bowler outwitting him, he tried to serve Mitchell Owen some more chin music. The fine leg was brought inside the circle for the top edge. A man was moved to deep square leg; another was stationed as a straightish midwicket. The snare was laid.
India’s Ashdeep Singh celebrates with teammate Harshit Rana after he caught Travis Head during the one day international cricket match between Australia and India in Perth Australia, Sunday, Oct. 19, 2025. (David Woodley/AAPImage via AP)
Only that the execution failed miserably. The short ball turned out to be a benign half-tracker that sat up for Owen, it was a reasonably quick surface too, to orbit it into the tiers over the deep square-leg’s head. He was not dissuaded, the first ball of the next over, with an identical field, he produced a slower ball bouncer that Owen had enough time to smear over mid-on. In the second ODI, he leaked five fours and two sixes. Five of the seven swipes came off either short or short of good length deliveries. All four of the boundaries Australia plundered from Rana in Perth were also the same lengths. It’s a classic case of his supposedly biggest strength turning out to be a weakness after all.
Or is it his real strength after all? Former cricketer and pundit Mohammad Kaif wonders. “I’m following Harshit Rana a lot, but he does not have a strong delivery. It’s not like he has a solid outswinger or an inswinger. When we speak about Siraj or Bumrah, they have their strengths, such as their yorkers, pace, or slower deliveries. But I can’t figure out what Harshit Rana’s strength is.” It could be the length he is most comfortable bowling, but not necessarily the length that could make him a fearsome proposition.
Part of the reason his hard-length endeavours misfire is because he does not have other gifts that could enhance the short-ball menace. The good length balls move negligibly; he is not quick enough to beat competent batsmen with pace; the lengths are not stifling enough to suffocate batsmen into a mistake. In short, he is still traversing a rudimentary stage of evolution. He doubtlessly has the build, the grit and perhaps the work ethics and spark to succeed. But he is too unripe for international cricket. It’s not like he would improve with more exposure. Few young fast bowlers come ready for this level, but his case is not merely smoothing the rough edges of an uncut diamond, as were Javagal Srinath or Ishant Sharma at the start of their career, but one that genuinely needs coats of polishing under the domestic sun. Adding a few yards of pace, nuancing different lengths and developing more reliable variations, than the off-cutter and learning to use the bouncer more judiciously could help cull out the glaring imperfections of his bowling. Domestic days could liberate him too, from the crushing scrutiny and parody. He could return stronger, like Siraj did. The Hyderabad seamer made his debut in a T20I game in 2017, was brutally punished, but returned in 2019 as a wiser and craftier seamer.
The selectors and team management — head coach Gautam Gambhir has been his most vociferous backer, defending him against the contempt of former cricketer Kris Srikkanth — argue that he is an investment for the future; a project player or that there are not too many blessed with Rana’s pace (a low bar at that) and there is a shortage of genuine quicks in domestic cricket. It could be partially true in red-ball cricketers, tearaways are not frantically knocking the Test doors. Prasidh Krishna certainly could, and he has more assets than Rana to prosper. He was last IPL’s most prolific wicket-taker and did not fare horrifically to deserve prolonged bench time (29 wickets at 25.58 in 17 games with an economy rate of 5.6) in this format. Rajasthan’s Khaleel Ahmed, at 27, looks a much-improved bowler than when he played the last of his 11 ODIs as a frazzled 20-year-old. Madhya Pradesh’s Avesh Khan too could still crank it upwards of 140kmph. Himachal Pradesh’s Vaibhav Arora operates in the mid-to-low 130kph but seams the ball both ways and bowls with control. An injury-free Anshul Kambhoj too would not have been a shocking choice.
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Harshit Rana in action. (AP photo)
Some would point out his staggering strike rate of 24.1. It needs contextualising. He took three on his debut, as a concussion substitute, but leaked 7.57 runs an overs and benefitted from thrifty spells of Mohammed Shami, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel. No one else let more than 5.30 runs an over. The theme recurred during his career-best show of 3/31 against Bangladesh. Najmul Shanto chased an outrageously wide ball; Rishad Hossain upper cut a rank short ball to short third man. Towhid Hridoy, centurion, perished in the last over chaos.
As good as grooming young but raw quicks are, the selectors could resort to quick-fixes and stopgaps. Like Mohit Sharma in the 2015 World Cup, because at this moment Rana looks like neither a stopgap nor a long-term fix, but one in need of domestic honing, as much as an arm of comfort.
