When Ryan ten Doeschate spoke before the Delhi Test, he made India’s intentions clear: they weren’t just picking Nitish Kumar Reddy to fill a slot and that they wanted to develop a seam-bowling allrounder for the future. For once, the words matched the actions. Nitish didn’t walk in at No.8. He wasn’t hidden behind a pile of allrounders. He was sent out at No.5, on 325/3 — the platform every young batter dreams of.
This was his chance. Not to “chip in”, not to “add depth”, but to make a statement. A start. A drop on 20. A few fluent strokes. And then…another score in the 40s. He has a few of them, and most were hard-fought knocks from lower down the order.
For context, Nitish’s Test career so far reads strangely for someone hailed as a genuine allround talent. Eight Tests. Thirteen innings. Twelve of them at No.7 or lower. With the ball, he’s averaged barely 35 deliveries per innings. That’s not how you groom an allrounder — that’s how you manage a stop-gap. But if his selection in the XI in these two Tests against West Indies and the Delhi batting promotion is anything to go by, India are trying.
“We think he’s a fantastic seam-bowling all-rounder, a batter that bowls seam,” ten Doeschate said before the Test. “I think the biggest sort of limitation to what his ceiling could be is going to be his body. He’s not the first all-rounder we’ve seen in this country. That applies to, let’s be perfectly honest, Hardik’sthe same sort of character of a player where we don’t doubt their skills at all. But for their bodies to hold up to play Test cricket is a different matter. Nitish has shown everyone in Australia just how good he is as a batter. And again, the challenge for him is going to be to make sure that he gets game time in between the away series.”
Let’s be fair — Nitish isn’t struggling. He belongs.
He’s already shown his temperament with that hundred at the MCG and those handy 40s in tough away conditions. Nobody doubts the ability. But development at this level isn’t about looking good. It’s about finishing the job, especially when there’s a long line of replacements waiting.
A No.5 in Test cricket doesn’t get points for promise — he gets judged on three-figure scores more often than not. This was a first for Nitish, so he has some leeway and it’s not that his 43 was bad. But this was one of the rare opportunities for him to turn the ‘start’ into a ‘statement’.
Because India have other options. Sai Sudharsan is fighting. Dhruv Jurel is rising. Washington, Jadeja, Axar — all can float between 5 and 8. Nitish is no longer shielded by usage. He’s competing on output, and that’s tricky at this stage of your career. And there’s no telling if this is just a one-off opportunity.
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To his credit, the team has shown patience. Ten Doeschate himself said they “didn’t get a good look at him in Ahmedabad” and wanted to give him game time. They stuck with him despite conditions and put him up for a test at No.5. That’s real investment.
But India can only carry a developing allrounder for so long when there is talent waiting and better team structure available. This means whatever chances that come his way, even if one-off opportunities, Nitish has got to hang onto it and make it count — with wickets in the first spell, with centuries when he gets to bat in a proper middle-order role.
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