On October 11, Kumar Kushagra finished his India A assignment against Australia A in Puducherry and headed straight back to Jamshedpur. He wasn't due to play Jharkhand's Ranji Trophy opener against Kerala, but that didn't stop him from turning up at the Keenan Stadium. He spent the day in the stands, watching his team-mates play.
"I have a straightforward mantra that I don't want to be far from the game," Kushagra told Cricinfo in June. "I don't want to get out of that zone."
That approach has helped the 22-year-old earn his maiden ODI and T20I call-ups for India, following a prolific run across formats in domestic cricket. Just before joining the India squad in New Zealand for the second T20I, he had been preparing to play the four-day games against New Zealand A, having been named Rishabh Pant's replacement for the first two matches.
Kushagra had done something similar earlier this year. After playing the India A one-day tri-series final in Sri Lanka on June 21, he flew home immediately to play the semi-final and final of the Jharkhand Premier League (JPL) over the next two days in Ranchi, helping Chota Nagpur Royals lift the title. He smoked 58 off 26 in the semi-final and followed it with an unbeaten 78 off 39 to be named Player of the Match in the final.
Kushagra recalls a conversation with his Jharkhand team-mate Ishan Kishan in 2024 that helped change his mindset: "I had a chat with Kishan bhaiyya in 2024 when I was not scoring runs in domestic cricket. He told me that I had to practice my batting as much as possible. He said I won't get to bat that much in the team net sessions so I would have to arrive at the nets early. And that I would have to train more during the offseason. The most important thing he told me was to get into such a zone where I could block out the outside noise automatically."
Kushagra put that advice into practice almost immediately. Ahead of Jharkhand's Ranji Trophy fixture against Baroda last season, for instance, he arrived at the nets about an hour and a half before the team's scheduled training session. Such sessions gradually became part of his routine, sometimes with throwdown specialists and sometimes with his junior team-mates.
The extra work soon began to translate into runs. Picked for East Zone in the Duleep Trophy at the start of this season, Kushagra scored 55 in the quarter-final and followed it with a brisk 101 off 132 balls and 46 in the final. Less than two weeks later, he registered another century, scoring 113 and an unbeaten 46 against Australia A in the first four-day game.
Kushagra had already enjoyed a prolific 2025-26 season across formats. He averaged 47.66 in the Ranji Trophy, scoring 572 runs. In the Vijay Hazare Trophy, he scored 368 runs at an average of 73.60 and a strike rate of 102.50. And in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, he was the third-highest run-scorer with 422 runs at an average of 60.28 and a strike rate of 161.68, helping Jharkhand win the title.
Those numbers are particularly impressive given that Kushagra's domestic performances haven't always been consistent. After averaging 62.71 in his maiden Ranji Trophy season in 2021-22, his average dropped to 33.00 in 2022-23.
"I worked and improved a lot on my game against fast bowling in red-ball cricket," Kushagra says. "Earlier I would get troubled even if the ball moved a little bit. Then I worked a lot on it with the help of my father and some seniors."
Kushagra's father, Shashikant Singh, has played a major role in his development as a cricketer. The two would sit together after matches to analyse Kushagra's dismissals and identify what had gone wrong. Shashikant says they focused on one particular aspect of his son's batting after the 2023-24 season.
"We tried to reduce the number of premeditated shots he played," Shashikant tells Cricinfo. "You can't change such things overnight but if you keep working on it then you can get out of it. Now he plays each ball according to merit. There's not a big change in his technique apart from that."
Kushagra's lean spell in red-ball cricket had also come up in discussions within the Jharkhand team management, Cricinfo has learnt. Head coach Ratan Kumar and JSCA secretary Saurabh Tiwary believed he had a sound technique and decided to try him at No. 3. The move paid off when Kushagra struck a double-century against Baroda at the start of last season. It was only his third Ranji Trophy innings at No. 3 and showed his ability to adapt to a new position and handle the new ball.
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Shashikant had left no stone unturned in preparing his son for the highest level. He was at home watching Kushagra's dismissals from the recent series against Australia A when his son burst into the room and exclaimed, "Papa, ho gaya (it's done)!"
"When I asked him what is done, he said he had been picked for the last two ODIs against New Zealand," Shashikant says. "I was speechless.
"I always tried to be his pillar of support. I always told him there's no need to rush, it's not going to be easy to get into the Indian team. 'You're young, just focus on your game,' I used to tell him. But that one moment (when he got selected) shook me up."
There are numerous stories of fathers helping their sons reach international cricket in India, but Shashikant's journey is unusual. He never played professional cricket. Based in Jamshedpur, he took up a government job after completing his studies but was determined to make his son a cricketer.
Instead of enrolling Kushagra in an academy, Shashikant decided to become his coach himself. Having studied history for his master's degree in Delhi, he turned to books and research again, this time to learn about cricket. He pored over dozens of books, including Bob Woolmer's Art and Science of Cricket, studied Don Bradman's technique, collected clippings from old magazines and newspapers, and compiled a cricket manual of his own.
Shashikant laid a concrete pitch at home, where his research and Kushagra's hard work began to take shape.
"I don't think he had an idea that he would be selected for the Indian team [so soon]," Shashikant says. "He had the belief and hope because he had been playing for India A, no doubt. But when he gave me the news that he had made it, I felt like I had achieved everything...I don't need anything more now."
This story first appeared on Cricinfo Hindi and can be read here.