Gurnoor Brar, the basketball player turned fast bowler India are betting on

At Wellington, on a spicy deck, Gurnoor Brar took 4/30, his career best and first four-wicket haul in ODIs, to help bowl New Zealand out for 134. (CREIMAS)

It took Shubman Gill one session with Gurnoor Brar to pick up the phone and get the pacer into an Under-23 squad. Gill had seen him bowl in Katoch Shield matches, in his own India Under-19 days, and helped him into the Mohali district team before the Punjab call came. Almost a year before Brar reached the international circuit, with a dozen first-class games to his name, India head coach Gautam Gambhir was keeping an eye on him. The previous selection panel under Ajit Agarkar felt the same and fast-tracked him into the pool of pacers at the Centre of Excellence. The staff there believe India have found a true fast bowler, one with red-ball DNA in him.

The hype did not come from the IPL, where he has played one match, in 2023. It came from 22 first-class games and the grind that goes with them. Those who have worked with him describe a bowler built for the red ball, who understands what it takes to be a Test cricketer. Even before he broke into the India white-ball set-up, he had the work ethic of a fast bowler.

His father thought his height would help him in sport and steered him towards basketball. Brar’s love was always cricket, and fast bowling in particular. He took the game seriously only in his late teens. He watched endless videos of Dale Steyn. Beyond the aggression and the lengths, he seems to have understood that it was with the red ball that Steyn became a lethal pacer for years. Somewhere along the way Steyn’s line, “take the conditions out of equations when you are searching for wickets,” got him thinking. So Brar got down to hitting a length where the batsman invariably has to play. If they did, it gave him two ways in: the top of off-stump, or the edge in the cordon.

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“Obviously Morne Morkel teaches us a lot. How to use my height. He too had a similar style of bowling. So he keeps telling me a lot. Which length will suit us more on which wicket,” Brar said.
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Those who admire him agree on his strength: pace and bounce. It is what the 26-year-old has shown through his brief international career. At Wellington, on a spicy deck, he took 4/30, his career best and first four-wicket haul in ODIs, to help bowl New Zealand out for 134, and he showed maturity too. On a pitch with tennis-ball bounce, he could have bowled too short and threatened nobody. He did not. By the time he struck, Auqib Nabi and Anshul Kamboj had taken three wickets. Daryl Mitchell, who spent 104 balls on the way to a fighting 55, looked more watchful against Kamboj’s movement than Brar’s pace. He and Mitchell Santner added 59 to take New Zealand past 100.

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Then Brar broke the innings. He was patient with his length, and the batsmen struggled. Then his bounce took over, and Tom Latham and Glenn Phillips fell in the same over. New Zealand were 53/5, and lost their last five wickets for 22 runs. Brar also removed Nathan Smith in the 40th over.

“Every day I learn what I could have done better. So that is what I learn from every match. And I try to adapt the good things in my memories. And you said that the short ball wickets are good. But before that, whatever spell I had put, I was trying to go full. That I should keep the batsman a little ahead. And with that patience, if I hit the bouncer, I know that my bouncer is effective. But it will be a little wrong to overuse it. So when it matters to hit at the right moment, then it happened here,” Brar said after India won the rain-curtailed game by four runs on DLS to go 2-0 up in the five-match series.

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Several pacers are auditioning for the ODI XI, and Brar is among those giving India’s think-tank most encouragement. The team is still working out who fits its pace attack, and whether it can find a seamer who takes wickets in the middle overs. Kuldeep Yadav tends to do that, but given the combinations he is seen as surplus. A second wicket-taker alongside Jasprit Bumrah would let India breathe easier.

Brar will eventually compete with Prasidh Krishna, another quick. Unlike Prasidh, he consistently clocks 140kmph and above, and has one repeatable action. What he still has to find is control over his line and length. Once that is in place, Brar can be the fast bowler he wants to be: one who takes the conditions out of the equation.