Harsh Dubey’s 9 for 53 broke a Vidarbha record from 1967-68, and Kartikeya hit back to leave them 56 for 4
Harsh Dubey took nine Madhya Pradesh wickets on the first day in Nagpur, the best figures by any Vidarbha bowler in the Ranji Trophy.
Nov 2, 2026
No Vidarbha bowler had ever taken nine wickets in a Ranji Trophy innings. Harsh Dubey did it on Monday, the first day of their Elite Group A match against Madhya Pradesh in Nagpur, and finished with 9 for 53 from 23.1 overs as MP were bowled out for 209.
Only Nachiket Bhute stopped him from taking all ten, with the first wicket of the day. By stumps the match had tilted back a little. Kumar Kartikeya took three wickets, and Vidarbha closed on 56 for 4, still 153 behind.
How the nine fell
MP chose to bat at the VCA Stadium in Jamtha. Bhute had Yash Dubey caught behind in the sixth over, and Harsh Dubey’s first wicket came in the 17th, when Chanchal Rathore was lbw for 13. Saksham Purohit, Rajat Patidar and Shubham Sharma followed inside the next 12 overs. Patidar, the MP captain, made 2 off 13 balls. At 64 for 5 in the 29th over, the innings was falling apart.
Atharva Mahajan and Saransh Jain stopped that for a while with a stand of 72 for the sixth wicket. Jain hit seven fours in his 34 off 41 balls before Dubey trapped him lbw, and Mahajan carried on with the lower order. He made 85 off 123 balls, with three sixes, and was ninth out at 201, caught by Ravikumar Samarth. Two overs later Dubey bowled Ravi Kiran to end it.
Four of his overs were maidens. It was close to a one-man day: the other five Vidarbha bowlers sent down 43 overs between them and took one wicket.
A Vidarbha record from 1967-68
The best figures for Vidarbha in the Ranji Trophy until Monday were Arun Ogiral’s 8 for 39, also against Madhya Pradesh, in 1967-68. Nine in an innings is rare anywhere in the competition. The last one before this was Siddharth Desai’s 9 for 36 for Gujarat against Uttarakhand in 2024-25, the same season Anshul Kamboj took all ten for Haryana against Kerala.
That 2024-25 season was also Dubey’s breakout. He took 69 wickets, the most by anyone in a single Ranji season, and he made his ODI debut against Afghanistan in Dharamsala on 13 June 2026, taking 3 for 47.
Not in India’s squads for New Zealand
Dubey is in neither of the squads India named on 16 October for the ODIs and Tests in New Zealand. The Test squad has three spinners in Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar and Kuldeep Yadav, and Kamboj is in it as a seamer. Jadeja, like Dubey, is a left-arm spinner who bats.
The Ranji Trophy breaks for the white-ball tournaments after this round, so this is the last first-class cricket the selectors will see from him for a while.
His Vidarbha side still have work to do. Kartikeya removed Aman Mokhade and Satyam Bhoyar early and later trapped Danish Malewar lbw for a duck, and Avesh Khan had Samarth caught for 17. Dhruv Shorey (21) and the captain Akshay Wadkar (9) will resume on the second morning.