Gurnoor Singh Brar, a 25-year-old fast bowler from village Kheo Wali in Punjab’s Sri Muktsar Sahib district, was named in both of India’s squads for the Afghanistan series on Sunday, the same week chief selector Ajit Agarkar called him “one for the future.” The Test starts June 6 in New Chandigarh; the three-match one-day series follows from June 14. Jasprit Bumrah, India’s top-ranked Test bowler, has been rested for workload management.
Three other Indian quicks who would have been in the conversation are not available. The bench the Punjab pacer walks into is thinner than it has been in years, and that is one reason his name appears on both squad sheets at the same time.
The Squad Sheet That Made Brar’s Phone Ring
Shubman Gill captains both teams. KL Rahul is his Test vice-captain after Rishabh Pant was dropped from the deputy role, and Shreyas Iyer carries the ODI vice-captaincy. Beyond those headlines, the Agarkar selection panel announced India’s full Test and ODI squads for the Afghanistan series, handing out four maiden India caps: two pace bowlers, two spin-allrounders.
Brar and left-arm Vidarbha allrounder Harsh Dubey were picked across both formats. UP pacer Prince Yadav got an ODI-only call. Rajasthan’s left-arm spinner Manav Suthar made the Test squad without an ODI slot.
| Maiden Cap | Test | ODI | Role | State |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gurnoor Brar | Yes | Yes | Right-arm pace | Punjab |
| Harsh Dubey | Yes | Yes | Left-arm allrounder | Vidarbha |
| Prince Yadav | No | Yes | Right-arm pace | Uttar Pradesh |
| Manav Suthar | Yes | No | Left-arm spin-allrounder | Rajasthan |
Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are back in the ODI group, subject to clearing the BCCI fitness protocol. Hardik Pandya carries the same conditional tag. None of those three plays the Test, which means the senior-pro cushion that usually surrounds a debutant in the longer format is absent on this trip.
Why the Pace Bench Is Thinner Than It Looks
Bumrah’s rest is the headline absence. Underneath it sit several names selectors would normally turn to before reaching for a 25-year-old with eighteen first-class games on his card.
- Akash Deep missed the entire IPL 2026 season after a back injury and is still on a rehab schedule.
- Harshit Rana was ruled out of IPL 2026 with a stress reaction and has not returned to competitive cricket.
- Mayank Yadav is recovering from a lumbar stress fracture, the same injury family that has cycled through India’s fast-bowling group for three seasons.
- Mohammed Shami is not in the conversation after struggling with fitness and rhythm through the domestic year.
That leaves Mohammed Siraj and Prasidh Krishna to lead the Test attack, with Brar as the third seamer option if conditions or workload demand a change. In the ODI group, Arshdeep Singh and Krishna sit ahead of him and Prince Yadav.
India’s fast-bowling injury cycle has its own diagnosis. Lumbar stress fractures have moved through the senior pace group for three years, claiming months from Bumrah, Mayank Yadav and Krishna at various points.
The pacer from Mohali district cricket carries his own version of that history, which is part of what makes the selection a calculated bet rather than a feel-good story.
Six Feet Five, Late Starter, Heavy Ball
Brar grew up playing football and tennis. He picked up a red cricket ball for the first time at sixteen, after a school friend pointed at his frame and suggested he try the sport.
He stands six feet five inches today, taller than Ishant Sharma at his peak and a clean half-foot above the average Indian seamer of the last decade.
The fascination was always Dale Steyn. “I am a Dale Steyn fan. Because of him, I picked up bowling,” the Punjab quick told Times of India in an interview published this week. “He ruled world cricket for almost a decade. He was not only fast, but it was his skill that made him the best in the world.”
His domestic career record across formats has caught up to the height, all from a four-year span beginning with his 2021 Punjab List A debut:
- 52 first-class wickets across 18 matches at an average of 27, with best figures of 5 for 14 against Bihar.
- 33 Ranji Trophy wickets in 12 matches in 2024-25, finishing as Punjab’s leading wicket-taker at an economy of 3.43.
- 22 Sher-e-Punjab Trophy wickets in 11 matches at an average of 14, the league’s leading return that year.
- 12 India A wickets in three appearances ahead of the senior call.
That is the stats snapshot Agarkar’s panel stared at through the IPL window, when the 25-year-old barely got onto the field for Gujarat Titans after being retained off a Rs 30 lakh 2025 auction price.
Inside the Gill-Nehra-Rabada Tutor Chain at Gujarat Titans
Three people pulled Brar through the pipeline. Each played a different role at a different stage, and each is on staff or roster with Gujarat Titans today.
Gill Makes the Call
Shubman Gill first saw the young pacer bowl in Katoch Shield matches, when Gill was playing for India Under-19 and Brar was still being scouted out of Mohali school cricket. The current India captain flagged him for the Punjab district setup. Years later, after the 2023 back injury knocked the Punjab quick out of the Punjab Kings squad, Gill called and offered a slot at Gujarat Titans as a net bowler.
“He never gets satisfied and does not let his teammates be content,” Brar said of Gill in the same interview. “His grind is extreme and it has made him mentally strong as well.” That grind is now part of GT’s identity, and the Punjab seamer absorbed it from inside the camp rather than from a distance.
Nehra’s Test-Match Lengths
Ashish Nehra has built a reputation at Gujarat Titans for getting Test-match lengths out of T20 bowlers. The conditioning that lets a quick land six straight balls on a coin at 140 kmph in the eighteenth over is the heart of the GT bowling identity, and Nehra himself trades in injury anecdotes from his own career every time he sets a workload plan.
Ashish Nehra always tells me about his injuries and the mistakes he made in his career, like not taking care of his body and working excessively. He says working hard is important, but you must listen to your body. He keeps telling me to manage my workload and allow enough time for recovery.
That is Brar describing the daily script, in the Times of India interview. The coach’s own career ended early on the back of repeated injuries; the coaching has become a salvage operation for the next generation.
Rabada Watches After Spells
Kagiso Rabada bowled with the Punjab quick at Punjab Kings before both moved to Gujarat Titans, where the partnership tightened. According to the franchise’s profile of its young Indian pacer, Rabada stays at the side of the net after finishing his own spells and watches the youngster work.
“He tells me to keep it simple and hit the good length with good pace,” Brar said. The advice sounds elementary; it is precisely what most quicks bowling in the high 140s forget under match pressure.
The Disc Bulge That Taught Workload
The 2023 lesson came hard. After his IPL stint with Punjab Kings, the 25-year-old played the Sher-e-Punjab Trophy, Punjab’s domestic T20 competition. By the end of it, he had a disc bulge that progressed into a stress fracture and cost him the full 2023-24 season.
“Obviously, I did not take care of these things. I was not educated about workload and fitness. The load increased, I was not doing enough recovery work and then I got injured,” he said in the interview. He returned to Gujarat Titans as a net bowler for IPL 2024, was signed by the senior squad in the 2025 auction, and has been carefully managed since.
That history is why the selection is interesting. The BCCI is parachuting a young pacer with a back-injury record into a Test against the second-weakest red-ball opposition on the international calendar, on home turf in New Chandigarh, with the calendar built so he gets a full week’s preparation under Siraj and Krishna. If you wanted to debut a fragile asset under controlled conditions, the fixture profile matches.
The other half of the story is the reverse-swing tutorial Brar has been running with his coaches. With only one ball used in Indian domestic first-class cricket since the format change, the old-ball weapon has had to be learned from scratch, and Brar said his List A debut featured eighteen yorkers on the trot once a slightly worn ball started moving.
Brar’s June 6 Audition
The Test starts in three weeks. The Punjab seamer is not the favourite to take the new ball; Siraj almost certainly does that, with Prasidh Krishna as first change. But selectors do not rest Bumrah unless they want to look at the next layer of the pace pool, and the second new ball after tea on day one is the kind of slot a third seamer earns a longer look from.
If his height, pace and the reverse-swing work translate against Afghanistan’s mid-order, the panel gets exactly what it wanted: a real-conditions audition with low downside. If the back holds through ten days of red-ball cricket plus the ODI series, Gujarat Titans and BCCI medical staff get the data point they have been waiting for since IPL 2024. If either of those tests fails, Agarkar’s “one for the future” line becomes the ceiling rather than the floor, and the search for a fourth seamer carries into the home season with one fewer candidate on the list.
Bumrah comes back for the next assignment. Whether the Mohali-schooled pacer stays in the picture after he does is the question this fixture decides.
