From Mada to the Ranji Champions: Udhampur's Brijesh Sharma Comes Home to Play for J&K

Mada is not a town that turns up in cricket conversations. It sits in Udhampur district, an hour and a bit up the highway from Jammu city, and it has no academy anyone outside the district could name. In the spring of 2026 a fast bowler from there took 14 wickets in 13 games for the Rajasthan Royals, in his first season of professional cricket at any senior level.

Brijesh Sharma has now signed up to play for Jammu and Kashmir.

He has joined the J&K squad for the 2026-27 domestic season and has been in the preparation camp, with two practice matches against Uttarakhand at the SK Stadium in Srinagar — the first over 10 to 13 August, the second running 15 to 17 August. "Yes, Brijesh Sharma has linked up with the Jammu & Kashmir team for the Ranji Trophy," a JKCA official confirmed. "He's with the team for the preparation camp and has been progressing well."

The part of this that shouldn't have worked

Almost nobody arrives in the IPL the way Brijesh did. The conventional route runs through age-group cricket, then a state Ranji side, then a few good seasons, then an auction. He skipped the middle entirely. He had played no senior domestic cricket at all before the Royals picked him up at his base price of ₹30 lakh.

What he had instead was a state T20 league. Playing for Smashers Malda in the 2025 Bengal Pro T20 League, he took 11 wickets in seven matches — and, critically, he had registered as a Cricket Association of Bengal player, which is what put him in the IPL auction pool in the first place. It is an unusual path, and a slightly roundabout one: a bowler from Udhampur entering professional cricket through Bengal's domestic structure because that was the door that happened to be open.

Then 14 wickets in 13 games, which is a real return for a debut season and not a novelty statistic.

Why coming back matters more than it sounds

Switching registration from Bengal to J&K is a straightforward administrative act and an unusually loaded one. J&K are the reigning Ranji Trophy champions — they won their maiden title in 2025-26, which is the single biggest thing to happen to cricket in this union territory. A player with an IPL contract choosing to play his red-ball cricket here, rather than for the association that got him into the auction, is a vote on where the standard now is.

For anyone in Jammu division currently bowling at a taped tennis ball on a patch of ground in Udhampur or Samba, the sequence is worth reading slowly: small town, state T20 league, base-price auction pick, IPL wickets, home state's championship side. Not one step of that required being born somewhere with a floodlit academy.

What the camp has looked like

The Uttarakhand practice matches have been about workload and rhythm rather than results. On day one of the first game, Uttarakhand posted 342 for 3 — Aarav Mahajan making 86, Tejaswi Jaiswal 85 and captain Kunal Chandela 77. Brijesh bowled disciplined spells without a wicket to show for it; the two that fell to bowlers went to the left-arm spinners Abid Mushtaq and Vanshaj Sharma.

That is roughly what a pre-season fixture on a flat surface is supposed to look like, and it is not a form indicator. The second fixture is on now, finishing on 17 August.

What a switch like this actually involves

Domestic registration in Indian cricket is not a transfer market. A player is registered with one state association at a time, and that association is who he is eligible to play for in the Ranji Trophy and the rest of the BCCI domestic calendar. Moving means going through a change of registration, and it is the reason a player's IPL franchise and his red-ball side have nothing to do with each other — Brijesh will still be a Rajasthan Royals bowler in the spring and a J&K bowler through the winter.

The practical effect for him is that the red-ball season is now the part of the year that will actually shape his career. Twenty-over cricket got him noticed; four-day cricket is where a fast bowler learns to hold a line for fifteen overs in a day, and where selectors above state level do most of their looking. Doing that for the reigning champions, in home conditions, is a materially better apprenticeship than doing it somewhere he has no history.

What to watch next

The Ranji Trophy season proper is the thing. J&K go into it as defending champions, which is a position this side has never had to hold before, and the difference between a title and a one-off is what a team does the following year. A fast bowler with an IPL season already behind him is a genuine addition to that.

There is also a question worth keeping an eye on, which is how many more players follow this route. J&K's Ranji win, the Royals' willingness to take a punt on an unseen bowler from Udhampur, and the state T20 leagues that now exist across India have between them made the path from a small J&K town to professional cricket shorter than it has ever been. Brijesh Sharma is the current proof. Whether he is the last one or the first of several is the more interesting story, and it will take a couple of seasons to answer.

Sources: IANS; CricketCountry; Daily Excelsior.