Ashok Sharma, 24, makes India debut in Harare after a family split one cricket career in two
The Rajasthan fast bowler earned a first India cap against Zimbabwe on the back of a breakout IPL 2026 and a domestic season as the country's leading T20 wicket-taker. The story behind him is an elder brother who stepped away from the game.
One family, one cricket career — carried forward by the brother who kept playing.
Ashok Sharma, a 24-year-old fast bowler from Rajasthan, made his India debut on Thursday in the first T20I against Zimbabwe at the Harare Sports Club, according to WION's match coverage. He was picked ahead of fellow uncapped seamer Yash Thakur in India's XI, having played 16 T20 matches for 28 wickets before the game and taken six wickets in six IPL appearances for Gujarat Titans.
Sharma became the 23rd player to make his T20I debut for India on Zimbabwean soil, WION reported. Shreyas Iyer won the toss and chose to bowl.
The route here was not the usual one. According to NewsX's debut-day profile, Sharma was raised in Rampura, a village near Jaipur, in a farming household with limited money to fund two sporting careers. His elder brother Akshay, described as a district-level cricketer, stepped aside from the game so the family's savings could go to Ashok's training. An earlier ESPNcricinfo feature framed the same choice slightly differently — as a decision by the father that only one of his two sons could pursue cricket professionally — and carried Sharma's own account of the early years: "Earlier, I did not have anything. I even had to borrow shoes to play." In that account the shoes were borrowed from an academy senior, Akash Singh, not from his brother.
The cricket that got him noticed is recent and measurable. He finished the 2025-26 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy as the tournament's leading wicket-taker with 22 wickets from 10 innings at 15.63, per Newsbytes. In IPL 2026 the speed gun at the Narendra Modi Stadium read 154.2 kmph off one delivery against Rajasthan Royals — the fastest of the season at that point, according to Gulf News, which noted the reading still sits behind the Indian IPL marks of Umran Malik (157.0 kmph) and Mayank Yadav (156.7 kmph). Those are claimed speed-gun figures, not audited ones. His IPL contract history is a study in patience: a net bowler for Rajasthan Royals, a deal with Kolkata Knight Riders that yielded no game, back to RR, and finally Gujarat Titans for INR 90 lakh ahead of the 2026 season, per the ESPNcricinfo profile.
Ahead of the match Sharma said doing well in the shortest format could bring him closer to another ambition — playing Test cricket for India — and named former South Africa quick Dale Steyn as his biggest influence, Newsbytes reported.
The series he has walked into is a nervous one for India. The reigning T20 World Cup champions had not won a match in the format since lifting the trophy in March, a run of six straight defeats including a 2-0 loss to Ireland and a 4-0 defeat by England, which cost them the world No. 1 ranking and prompted a BCCI review, according to Yahoo Sport. Captain Shreyas Iyer, it added, had lost both series since taking charge.
The result of the first T20I could not be confirmed from a full scorecard at the time of writing; the tour's public record page remained a fixtures-only stub.