Dogra and Nasir earn a first-innings lead for Jammu & Kashmir

At 2:46pm, when Lone Nasir pulled a short ball over deep midwicket, the Jammu & Kashmir dugout including head coach Ajay Sharma, jumped for joy. On the next ball after Nasir whacked one over wide long-on for a one-bounce four, the applause was louder. Nasir even celebrated with a fist-pump. You wouldn't be blamed for thinking that they had won the game. What had happened was J&K had taken the first-innings lead in the Irani Cup against Rest of India about an hour after it had seemed improbable.

Much like RoI on the first day, J&K suffered a middle-order collapse in the post-lunch session where they went from 138 for 4 to 166 for 8. They were still 71 behind RoI's first innings total of 237. Nasir joined his captain Paras Dogra, who was fighting it out. A flick off the third ball he faced - off Akash Deep no less - sent the ball purring to the midwicket rope. Once the deficit came below 50, Nasir started to feel confident with his partner feeding him more of the strike. And he began to revel.

Nasir fetched a Manav Suthar delivery from outside off and swept it to deep midwicket. He also lofted the left-arm spinner over extra cover in the same over. And once Dogra fell with J&K trailing by seven, Nasir launched a calculated assault that suddenly disturbed RoI's plans. This is not how lower-order batters are supposed to do things. For a large part of the day, RoI's fast bowlers used the short and short-of-good length deliveries to intimidate the batters. Nasir wasn't going to let them do that, as he showed with the two shots that put J&K into ascendancy. He also hit Mukesh Kumar for a sequence of 4, 6, 6 to gallop to a 48-ball fifty.

Nasir is no mug with the bat. He considers himself a proper seam-bowling allrounder. He was called up to the BCCI Under-23 camp in 2020 but it had to be cancelled because of Covid-19. He has been regularly attending IPL trials for the last five years and has also been a net bowler with Sunrisers Hyderabad for three seasons. Had Auqib Nabi (on India duty) and Yudhvir Singh (injured) been available, Nasir would not have even played this Irani Cup. In fact, he was picked in the XI at the last minute and didn't even have a jersey of his own. When he came in to bat, J&K's chances of taking the lead were hanging by a thread. By the time he was trapped lbw by a reverse swinging ball from Akash Deep for 58-ball 64, the tables had turned.