Mission 160kph: The making of Ashok Sharma, India's latest speed sensation

India's tour of Zimbabwe, 2026

Mission 160kph: The making of Ashok Sharma, India's latest speed sensation

by Aadya Sharma •

Ashok made his India debut in the 1st T20I in Zimbabwe. © BCCI/IPL

Ashok made his India debut in the 1st T20I in Zimbabwe. © BCCI/IPL

When Ashok Sharma was a teenager, his father left him and his brother with the sort of decision that no family wants to face.

Ashok is five years younger than Akshay and grew up watching his elder brother in inter-school competitions. Whenever Akshay left the house to play, a young Ashok would grumble and complain to his parents. By age 12, he had joined his brother in the school team.

Both bowled pace, both shared the same dream, but as they became serious with the seasoned ball, the family’s struggling finances only allowed one of them to go ahead. Their father, a driver for a vernacular publication, would run the family by delivering newspapers at night. “He hadn’t had much education,” Akshay tells Cricbuzz. “He asked us to decide and said he would be okay with it.”

After some consideration, it was Akshay who decided to quit his dream, pushing Ashok to take part in the inter-district U16 trials. “He was younger, had a better chance,” Akshay says. “I don’t have any regrets. What I did was right.”

Today, he works as a local coach without any particular affiliation, helping where needed, and his younger brother is the latest fast bowler to be capped by India. Ashok’s selection in Harare marks another significant moment for a bowler who was virtually unknown when he clocked 154.2kph with one of his deliveries for Gujarat Titans in IPL 2026.

Since then he has gone to Dambulla, debuting for the India A team, and been picked for the senior team’s series in Zimbabwe. Back in Rampura, on the outskirts of Jaipur, there’s still a sense of disbelief in the Sharma household. “Aisa lagta hai hum log khuli aankhon se sapna dekh rahe hain, (It’s like we are dreaming with open eyes)” Akshay says. “Forget IPL, we could never even think of (getting into the) state team. Even to play district-level, we had to plead to so many people.”

Such pleas were nothing in comparison to the sacrifices that the family made along the way, each one giving Ashok a crucial opening.

At the U16 trial that Ashok attended after his brother had given up his own career, he was introduced to the man who would turn his fortunes. Vivek Yadav, a two-time Ranji Trophy winner with Rajasthan, saw something in the tall, wiry boy. The speed was hard to miss. He convinced Ashok to enroll in his coaching centre: the Aravalli Cricket Academy.

To cover the distance of 45kms every day, Akshay would himself drop his brother on a motorbike. Eventually, Vivek decided to house Ashok at the academy free of cost.

“His family’s financial condition was not good,” Jagsimran Singh, Ashok’s coach at Aravalli, recalls. “His brother would come visit every week, bringing something along from the house. But they couldn’t bear the expenses of two days straight.”

Blessed with raw pace, Ashok found special attention from Jagsimran, who spent the next year and a half patching his basics. There was a heavy sway of tennis-ball cricket in his delivery. Ashok would bowl fast with a short run-up, without a real hold on accuracy. For the tall boy, it was hard to rein in the swing of the leather ball. Piece-by-piece, he put Ashok together.

Now fast and compact, Ashok was picked for the Rajasthan U19 team, but that’s where the first setback came. After enduring a poor outing on his debut, he was dropped from the squad after three games. Players from his batch moved ahead, and the snub singed Ashok.

“I am ready to do whatever you tell me,” he told Jagsmiran, and the work continued.

If Ashok were to bowl fast consistently, just being tall wasn’t enough. Speed was not to be compromised: Jagsimran had to maximise his physical potential, and turn him into an infrangible unit.

“We worked on his body structure and built muscle mass to improve the hypertrophy of his muscles,” Jagsimran recalls. “If the size (of his muscles) increases, his contraction would increase and when it is released, he would be able to generate more power.

“We worked on his entire structure: chest, shoulders, biceps and triceps, as well as gluteus muscles. When he played U19, he was very lean. By 2022, he had altered his body structure completely. He looked like a total athlete.”

His training was accentuated by a clean, home-inspired diet. Ashok is a vegetarian, and only really got around to understanding protein portions during the IPL.

His fellow Rajasthan seamer, Danish Bhambhu, vouches for his diet control. “For the last three-four years, I have not seen him consume sugar one bit, aside from natural sugar. Even if you give him sugared tea, he will refuse to take it. Last year, when he was selected for the IPL, he would refuse anyone who came to offer sweets. Not even one bit. It was his turning point, really. He wouldn’t skip training, even for a day.”

While Ashok became faster, he also developed more control over his bowling at Aravalli. “He would hit hard lengths,” Jagsimran says. “Everyone would tell him: ‘bowl fuller, you can’t be successful from this length.’ But I told him bowling fuller could only increase the chances of getting hit. It’s hard to score off a hard length on the body. The focus was more on giving as little width as possible.”

Ashok had two different stints at RR as net bowler and one season at KKR on the bench before debuting for GT in the IPL. © BCCI/IPL

Jagsimran recalls a club match in 2022 that told him he was finally ready. “It was a dead wicket, and suddenly his ball started flying off the front of the pitch,” Jagsimran says. “The keeper was standing at 30 yards and was still jumping to grab the ball.”

The grind did not translate into a breakthrough. Ashok stagnated after his brush with U19 cricket, and did not get any chances at the U23 level either. The long wait across three years nearly took the fire out of him. ‘I want to leave cricket,’ he told Akshay at one point. ‘Let’s see if I can do something else instead.’

A timely lifeline came in the form of the Red Bull Speedster competition in 2021. Designed to unearth fast bowlers from India’s corners, it paved the way for trials with the Rajasthan Royals, and subsequently a role as a net bowler.

For the Aravalli academy, it marked yet another IPL link, vindicating Vivek’s decision to pick and nurture the kid. “Vivek bhaiya was like an angel to us,” says Akshay. As fate would have it, the day Ashok came back home from his stint with the Royals, news broke that Vivek had passed away at 36 due to Covid-related complications. “It was a very difficult time,” Akshay recalls wistfully.

Dealing with the setback, Ashok still hoped for a big breakthrough to come his way. The Royals had given Ashok his first nibble of the IPL, but that was it.

The following year, Kolkata Knight Riders gave him his first IPL contract. But he was benched through the season, and released right after. RR picked him up as a nets bowler again. Akshay recalls how Ashok felt “hopeless” at the lack of progress, complaining how he would just be picked and benched for a newer face to get a go-ahead. Those around urged him to wait for his moment.

When Rajasthan finally gave him a senior debut, Ashok grabbed the chance with both hands. He finished his debut Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy as the top-wicket taker in the country.

For three years Ashok had paid his dues, failing to make it to the senior team, and not getting a single IPL game. But Jagsimran puts his SMAT success down to a post-2022 spurt in pace. It was the culmination of all the background work leading up to his debut season.

“No one can be perfect, but we tried to make his biomechanics as close to perfect as possible,” Jagsimran says. “We fixed his back-foot landing, but even his front foot used to open outwards. He was an open-chested bowler, but it would open out and cause him side strains. We worked on making the back foot parallel to the landing. The force should be targeted towards the finish of the action. While releasing, the head should not fall past the vertical body.”

“He has been bowling this fast for the last few years,” Bhambhu says. “It’s only getting highlighted this year.”

Despite his obsession with pace, Ashok realises he can’t be a one-trick pony. Before IPL 2026, he worked particularly hard on improving his yorkers and slower balls.

“He has been bowling this fast for the last few years. It’s only getting highlighted this year.” © BCCI/IPL

In fact, his first IPL wicket of Marco Jansen came from a back-of-the-hand slower ball, delivered at a crucial juncture of the game. He played just six matches in the IPL season, but was decently effective at the death, claiming five wickets between overs 16-20 at a strike-rate of 9.60 with a dot-ball percentage of nearly 40.

Aashish Kapoor, assistant coach at GT, tells that Ashok – still young and raw - was initially supposed to serve as a backup to an already established lineup of Kagiso Rabada, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, alongside secondary options Ishant Sharma and Arshad Khan.

“But (head coach Ashish) Nehra saw something and we all saw something that we made him play from the start,” says Kapoor. “He became one of our four (main) bowler”. Ashok got six games, before GT restructured their lineup.

“Right now, he has clocked 154. I feel if he plays two-three more tours with India, and gets more chances to play, he will become the fastest bowler of India.

“He will touch 160. I have utmost belief in him.”

© Cricbuzz

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