Recent rehab for a knee injury left the Tamil Nadu spinner unsure about himself but a century and a seven-for this week has rekindled belief

Deivarayan Muthu

Published: Nov 5, 2026, 11:30 AM (3 hrs ago)

In the lead-up to the 2026-27 Ranji Trophy season, Tamil Nadu left-arm fingerspinner S Ajith Ram had sleepless nights, wondering if he could make a successful comeback to red-ball cricket after a long layoff. Ajith had spent 19 months on the sidelines after suffering an ACL tear in his knee during the 2025 Tamil Nadu Premier League (TNPL).

The injury had set Ajith back after he had emerged as the joint second-highest wicket-taker, behind his captain and spin twin R Sai Kishore, in the 2023-24 Ranji season when TN made the semi-finals.

TN have not qualified for the knockouts since but are well placed for it this season following their bonus-point win against Chandigarh.

Ajith was the all-round star for TN this week, setting up the win with a maiden first-class century, then sealing it with a career-best 7 for 48 in the ball. He was not picked in TN's XI for their Ranji opener against Rajasthan, but worked his way back into action against Uttarakhand and Railways at home in Chepauk. Then, away from home, he achieved the rare feat of scoring a hundred and grabbing a seven-for in the same Ranji match. It capped a remarkable turnaround for a player coming through months of nothing but uncertainty.

"Definitely, I had nerves before the start of this season," Ajith said at Chepauk before the fourth round of matches. "Initially, it was very tough for me, for the first two-three months, I couldn't sleep. But once I accepted that this was reality and began coping with it, my entire focus shifted to my comeback. Whatever has happened has happened. These 19 months helped me focus on the controllables."

In a TN side that already has Sai Kishore, one of the finest all-format spinners in the country, Ajith often flies under the radar. He doesn't bowl the carrom ball like Sai Kishore does, he is yet to play a senior white-ball game for TN, and isn't really on the wishlists of IPL franchises.

Ajith is an old-school fingerspinner who relies on flight and turn, and the endurance to bowl long spells. Quietly, he has racked up 108 wickets in 21 Ranji games at a bowling average of 16.72. Since Ajith's debut in December 2022, nobody has a better bowling average (min. 30 innings) during this period in the Ranji Trophy. The likes of Auqib Nabi (17.3) and Harsh Dubey (18.61) slot in behind Ajith on this list.

"I consider bowling tight lines and hitting consistent areas as my strengths," Ajith said. "It's also bowling in tandem with Sai. When you hunt in pairs, you have to keep both ends tight. Once I start keeping things tight and doing well from one end, he gets the freedom to attack and pick up wickets. Through that process, I end up with wickets too and that's how we started winning more matches.

"Sai and I share the same perspective and craft and he understands my strengths. Since he knows my bowling and I know his, whenever I come on to bowl, the fields are usually already in place. I just have to step up and bowl, which makes things much easier."

Ajith had actually started his career as a medium-pacer before the late VB Chandrasekhar mentored him and turned him into a spinner.

"I began my cricket under VB Sir and I was too young to grasp spin at that point," Ajith said. "Growing up, I idolised [Ravindra] Jadeja and [R] Ashwin anna - their partnership for the Indian team was incredible and they consistently got wickets. I dream of bowling in tandem and picking up wickets like them."

When Ajith made his Ranji debut in late 2022, he had doubts whether he could cope with the pressure at that level. But dismissing one of his heroes, Ravindra Jadeja at Chepauk, and Cheteshwar Pujara in a quarter-final in Coimbatore, gave him the belief that he had the skills to cut it even against top players.

"During my first two-three games, I was unsure," Ajith said. "But as I began bowling well and taking crucial wickets like that, it showed me I can perform at this standard and start aiming higher - like playing in the Duleep Trophy and performing there. It gave me the confidence to take steps forward one by one."

The road back from injury has been a long and twisty one for Ajith, but he's in a good place now and so are TN in their push for the knockouts.

Deivarayan Muthu is a senior sub-editor at Cricinfo