The 22-year-old wicketkeeper-batter has tuned up for the 2026-27 domestic season by participating in the Karnataka State Cricket Association’s (KSCA’s) K Thimmappiah Memorial Trophy, a red-ball multi-day pre-season tournament, and more recently in a four-dayer for Rest of India against domestic Under-23 champions Tamil Nadu in Chennai.
“I really enjoyed myself. This is what all cricketers want to do, no one wants to sit at home being injured,” Raghuvanshi said at Chepauk on Sunday. “So I’m really grateful that I could be back on the field. Bahut maza aaya [It was a lot of fun]. I hope I can stay fit like this throughout the season and have a good season.”
After scoring 51 in the first innings, Raghuvanshi went much bigger in the second, making 203 off 281 balls in Chennai’s oppressive heat, which was proof of his fitness. He disrupted Tamil Nadu’s spinners with a variety of sweeps on a surface that offered variable bounce.
“I was just trying to look at the ball and enjoy my cricket over there,” Raghuvanshi said. “I’m playing after such a long break and it gave me some clarity and my happy place is there in the middle, so [I] just tried to bat as long as I can.
“Every batter that plays wants to score hundreds and big hundreds, so I’d say it was a good day for me.”
“I’m not thinking about personal goals – how many runs I’ll score or anything. It’s about how many trophies I can win for my team in whatever tournament”
Angkrish Raghuvanshi
“I’ve spent roughly 16 of the past 36 months sidelined,” Raghuvanshi said. “There have been plenty of highs and lows, but I knew what I signed up for – injuries are an inevitable part of professional sport. At the end of the day, my passion for the game runs so deep that no setback can diminish my love for playing.
“Every time I have a conversation with him [Nayar], I have a lot of clarity. And during the injuries, he just told me to find what else I could work on while [I was] injured; don’t just sit and rest. So, for example, when my back was injured, he said, ‘So what? You can still do bicep curls and work on different parts of cricket – whether that be meditation or visualisation or other parts of fitness’. This time, my finger was injured, he said, ‘So what? You can still run, your legs are fine.’
“Abhishek Nayar tells me to improve a lot of things, he gave me that idea [of keeping wicket],” Raghuvanshi said. “It’s all about what you can add to your skill set and what you can add for the team, right? So, I think that was his thought behind it and I’m always keen to learn and try new things.
“I think before the IPL I’d barely batted, I was keeping for like hours in the nets. I think he [Yagnik] prepared me really well for that challenge. Obviously, at the start when I picked up the gloves it was really tough, but by that time when I got into facing Varun [Chakravarthy] and Sunil [Narine], it became a lot easier because I had so many hours behind me.”
Having regained full fitness, Raghuvanshi put in a good shift in Chennai across both innings, but the experience was soured by the defeat to Tamil Nadu on Sunday. He has now set his sights on winning trophies for Mumbai in the upcoming domestic season.
“There are some technical things I’ve been working on that I want to improve,” Raghuvanshi said. “But I’m not thinking about personal goals – how many runs I’ll score or anything. It’s about how many trophies I can win for my team in whatever tournament. Whether it’s for my domestic side Bombay or my club Parsee Gymkhana.”
Deivarayan Muthu is a senior sub-editor at Cricinfo
