Nitish Kumar Reddy, the find of India’s tour of Australia

Okay, confession time. Hand on heart, how many of you reading this thought that Nitish Kumar Reddy, aged 21 and yet to play Test cricket, would play all five matches of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia?

The uncapped allrounder bolted into India’s squad for these five Test matches despite owning a first-class batting average of 21 from 21 matches (his first-class bowling numbers for Andhra – nowhere near a top domestic team – are more promising). At the end of the BGT, Reddy stands as India’s second-highest run-getter with 298 at an average of 37.28 with a top score of 114. He took to Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins, Nathan Lyon and Scott Boland as if he had come up via the Sheffield Shield, and by the time the series ended he had struck the most sixes for any player on either side. 

Australians have long respected visiting cricketers who perform on Australian soil, and Reddy has been widely cheered by the crowds that turned up in Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne – where he scored his first century for India – and Sydney. That’s because he scrapped, showed an appetite for a contest and top-scored in four out of India’s nine completed innings on tour. 

Yes, the form petered way in Sydney where his shot selection was questionable. Yes, his seam bowling was not threatening. But to emerge from your first tour of Australia with almost 300 runs, when you’ve batted only at numbers seven and eight, is very respectable. 

With Hardik Pandya having quit red-ball cricket in 2018 and Shardul Thakur battling fitness and inconsistency, Indian cricket has been looking for a seam-bowling allrounder for Test cricket. The bowling requires a lot of work, which Reddy admitted during the Boxing Day Test. He will need to add a yard of pace, but more than bracketing Reddy as a seam-bowling allrounder, there is merit to consider him as a proper batsman capable of batting at four or five. 

Gautam Gambhir has gotten a fair amount of flak during his six-odd months as India’s coach, but he must be acknowledged for fast-tracking Reddy into the T20I and Test squads. Reddy, who hails from Visakhapatnam, burst into the wider cricket loving public’s senses during IPL 2024 with some punchy cameos and brilliant fielding – case in point: his boundary take of Quinton de Kock – as Sunrisers Hyderabad made it to the final. No doubt, playing under an astute leader such as Cummins and rubbing shoulders with a big-match player in Travis Head widened young Reddy’s eyes and exposed him to that unique Australian sense of winning.  

Handed a Test debut in Perth, he showed immediately that he belonged with 41 in his maiden innings, which ended up being the highest score for India on day one. In the second dig, with the declaration in sight, he opened his shoulders to slug 38 not out off 27 deliveries. In the day-night Test that followed, Reddy was India’s top-scorer in both dismal innings, making 42 both times. He could only score 16 in Brisbane, but crucially displayed the gumption to bat out time, staying at the crease for over an hour as India inched towards averting the follow-on.

Then, at the iconic MCG, in front of nearly 90,000 spectators, and with India once again floundering, Reddy finally moved past 42. He got his first Test fifty and converted that into a terrific century, one that with more support could have ended up being match-winning. 

What stands out, apart from the defensive skill and gorgeous shots, is Reddy’s temperament. He is not accustomed to batting as low as No 8 in any form of cricket, but for his team he performed the role admirably. 

Note the score lines when Reddy came out to bat in this series. They were 73/6 on day one in Perth before his debut innings of 41 helped them get to 150. In Adelaide, they were 87/5 on the first innings and Reddy was last out for 42 with the score 180, and then from 105/5 he hauled the score to 166/9. At the MCG, Reddy walked out with the scoreboard reading 191/6 and when he was out, having scored 114 off 189 deliveries, India had reached 369. 

That kind of grit and match awareness is rare, and the only other young Indian batsman to show anything close to Reddy’s assessment of the team’s need is Dhruv Jurel, who in 2024 scored 90 and 39* in his second Test match to shape a clinical victory. Jurel started the BGT in Perth when Shubman Gill was injured, and did not get another look-in. After Reddy’s sensational tour, the case to include the 21-year-old should have grown stronger.

After all, it was in Australia during the 2020-21 tour during Covid19 that India turned around a disastrous start to win the series 2-1 thanks in no small part to the contributions of two Tests debutants aged 21 (Gill and Washington Sundar) and a 23-year-old Rishabh Pant. For a team in transition, backing young potential is the way forward.