A Level Playing Field in Kashmir

Jammu & Kashmir’s march into the Ranji Trophy final sends a larger message beyond sport. It says that after decades, the state is finally aligning with India’s political and civic mainstream.

History has a habit of announcing itself in strange ways. In Jammu & Kashmir, it now announces itself by wearing cricket whites. As the once-turbulent state plays its first Ranji Trophy final in 67 years against Karnataka in Hubballi, the moment matters far more than a mere sporting miracle.

It was incredible (one would have thought unimaginable until recently) to see J&K piling up 527 for six in a Ranji final while dictating terms to eight-time champions Karnataka.  

Jammu & Kashmir’s arrival at the summit of Indian domestic cricket is not just an underdog fairy-tale but a marker of political normalisation in a region long defined by terrorism and scarred by violence.

Troubled State

That marginality was not accidental. From the moment of accession in 1947, Jammu & Kashmir has occupied a liminal constitutional space. Article 370 institutionalised the difference between the state and the rest of the country with separate laws, a separate flag, and limited applicability of parliamentary legislation for J & K. In New Delhi, the move was defended as ‘accommodation.’ In Srinagar, it became both shield and grievance. Over time, special status hardened into political stasis as power rotated among a few families. Militancy, once it erupted in the late 1980s, thrived in this vacuum as political instability and insurgency became the norm. A heavy security footprint ensured that ‘integration’ in J & K remained relegated to slogans rather than substance. Sport barely survived as talent drained outward.

Auqib Nabi’s journey captures that old reality and its quiet reversal. In 2018–19, Nabi, a fast bowler from Baramulla, found himself in Bengaluru, relying on a friend in Kuwait to secure a second-division club contract. Eight years on, he is the most prolific wicket-taker in Indian domestic cricket across the last two seasons, with 55 wickets in the current Ranji campaign alone. At the IPL auction, Delhi paid Rs. 8.4 crore for him.

Nabi’s rise mirrors that of his team. Jammu & Kashmir are no longer petitioners at Indian cricket’s door. They are its strongest contenders. And that shift has unfolded alongside a far more contentious political transformation.

The abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019 during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second term was the most radical assertion of Indian sovereignty over the region since accession. It ended J&K’s special status, split the state into two Union Territories, and placed governance firmly under New Delhi’s supervision. Critics of the Modi government’s decision to abrogate Article 370 predicted catastrophe. The Congress and the so-called left-liberal ecosystem warned of irreversible alienation, democratic asphyxiation and an endless insurgency that would render Jammu & Kashmir ungovernable.

Six years on, none of those apocalyptic forecasts have materialised. While militancy has not disappeared, it certainly has mutated to a much smaller scale than before.

Markets in J & K function without habitual shutdowns and tourism has rebounded to record levels, sustaining thousands of livelihoods once hostage to unrest. Young Kashmiris speak less of resistance and more of careers.

While the Pahalgam massacre last year was a grim reminder that Pakistan-backed groups retain the capacity to shock, equally important is what did not happen after Pahalgam. There was no prolonged paralysis of governance and no prolonged shutdown of civic life. Tourism slowed briefly but then resumed. And institutions no longer buckled down under political pressures as in the past.

Cricket’s quiet flourishing is the best evidence of violence losing its veto over normal life in the state.

By the time the insurgency had peaked in the 1990s, normal civic life in the state had collapsed under the shadow of terrorism. Cricket survived only in fragments. While Jammu & Kashmir had entered the Ranji Trophy in 1959, for decades participation felt symbolic rather than competitive.

Momentous Turnaround

When ex-cricketer Ajay Sharma, who has a formidable domestic record, took charge of the Jammu & Kashmir team in 2022, he encountered a culture shaped by limitation. Players spoke of IPL trials as endpoints. Being a net bowler was an achievement. Sharma has essayed a big role in changing the mindset of the players.

His patience and efforts has paid dividends. Auqib Nabi’s journey, from second-division obscurity in Bengaluru to India’s most prolific domestic bowler, has become emblematic of the shift in aspirations of the state’s players. So has Abdul Samad’s recalibration from IPL-first bravado to first-class discipline. After stunning Mumbai away in 2024–25, the J & K cricket association built its first red-soil pitch at the Sher-i-Kashmir Stadium, consciously aligning preparation standards with the rest of India.

The result is that today, J&K’s run to the final has drawn support from all across the country not as sympathy or charity of emotion, but as genuine admiration. Neutrals cheer them not because they are from a conflict zone, but because they have beaten Delhi in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh in Indore and Bengal in Kalyani.

That mirrors India’s evolving political posture towards the region as well. The Centre no longer sells integration as an emotional project of unity, but as a ‘procedural one where same laws, same institutions, same expectations.

One of the central critiques of Article 370 was that it fostered a politics of grievance without accountability. Since its removal, governance has become more uniform. That has sharpened incentives in the state as institutions are now measured on how they perform.

Social Change

This political transformation is reflected rather clearly in its social avatar, namely cricket. And the Ranji Trophy is particularly apt in this regard. It is India’s least glamorous but most levelling sporting institution.

More subtly still, it captures a change in aspiration. For much of the insurgency era, Kashmiri youth were asked to define themselves politically. Today, an increasing number define themselves competitively. This is getting reflected in cricket, where J & K’s cricketers are defining themselves by their hunger for runs scored and wickets taken. This transition from grievance to ambition may yet prove the most enduring legacy of Jammu & Kashmir’s uneasy, unfinished integration.

This is not to say that Jammu & Kashmir’s presence in the Ranji Trophy final is proof that all of the region’s knotty problems have been solved. But it certainly is evidence that Jammu & Kashmir’s alignment with India today runs through laws, institutions and yes, cricket.

Which is why the sight of the state contesting the Ranji Trophy final in Hubballi feels quietly momentous. In many ways, it reveals how far the idea of ‘normalisation’ of J & K which was long promised but rarely delivered, has actually travelled.