Dogra and Nasir earn a first-innings lead for Jammu & Kashmir

They were 166 for 8 trailing Rest of India's 237 but then came the rearguard

Rest of India 237 and 24 for 1 (Sunil 1-9) trail Jammu & Kashmir 278 (Dogra 75, Nasir 64, Samad 57, Choudhary 5-78) by 17 runs

At 2:46pm, when Lone Nasir pulled a short ball over deep midwicket, the Jammu & Kashmir dugout including head coach Ajay Sharma, jumped for joy. On the next ball after Nasir whacked one over wide long-on for a one-bounce four, the applause was louder. Nasir even celebrated with a fist-pump. You wouldn't be blamed for thinking that they had won the game. What had happened was J&K had taken the first-innings lead in the Irani Cup against Rest of India about an hour after it had seemed improbable.

Much like RoI on the first day, J&K suffered a middle-order collapse in the post-lunch session where they went from 138 for 4 to 166 for 8. They were still 71 behind RoI's first innings total of 237. Nasir joined his captain Paras Dogra, who was fighting it out. A flick off the third ball he faced - off Akash Deep no less - sent the ball purring to the midwicket rope. Once the deficit came below 50, Nasir started to feel confident with his partner feeding him more of the strike. And he began to revel.Related'I still wake up with that josh' - Paras Dogra, 41, ready for another season

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Nasir fetched a Manav Suthar delivery from outside off and swept it to deep midwicket. He also lofted the left-arm spinner over extra cover in the same over. And once Dogra fell with J&K trailing by seven, Nasir launched a calculated assault that suddenly disturbed RoI's plans. This is not how lower-order batters are supposed to do things. For a large part of the day, RoI's fast bowlers used the short and short-of-good length deliveries to intimidate the batters. Nasir wasn't going to let them do that, as he showed with the two shots that put J&K into ascendancy. He also hit Mukesh Kumar for a sequence of 4, 6, 6 to gallop to a 48-ball fifty.

Nasir is no mug with the bat. He considers himself a proper seam-bowling allrounder. He was called up to the BCCI Under-23 camp in 2020 but it had to be cancelled because of Covid-19. He has been regularly attending IPL trials for the last five years and has also been a net bowler with Sunrisers Hyderabad for three seasons. Had Auqib Nabi (on India duty) and Yudhvir Singh (injured) been available, Nasir would not have even played this Irani Cup. In fact, he was picked in the XI at the last minute and didn't even have a jersey of his own. When he came in to bat, J&K's chances of taking the lead were hanging by a thread. By the time he was trapped lbw by a reverse swinging ball from Akash Deep for 58-ball 64, the tables had turned.File photo: Paras Dogra scored a valiant 75•PTI

Nasir's counter-attack would perhaps not have been possible without solid contributions from Dogra and Abdul Samad. Resuming the second day on 21 for 2, J&K were under the cosh with fast bowlers continuing to have a major say on a surface that had a tinge of brown but was still very much a green top. Mukesh Choudhary extracted a good amount of seam and swing and that resulted in Shubham Khajuria's wicket in the second over of the day. After being denied an lbw off a length ball that swung in, Choudhary bowled the same delivery, only a little fuller and little wider. That prompted Khajuria to reach out away from his body and inside-edge it onto the stumps.

With Qamran Iqbal, who scored an unbeaten 160 in the Ranji Trophy final last year, moving around in the crease to unsettle the batters, Choudhary undid him with a sharp bouncer down leg which he could only glove behind. As a result, Dogra and Samad found themselves in the middle at 37 for 4 with the bowlers breathing fire. Dogra specifically found himself in all sorts of awkward positions whenever Choudhary or Akash Deep pitched the ball in their half. He only got off the mark on the 16th ball he faced, and had a close shave early on. Seeing a 138kph bumper from Akash Deep, Dogra took his eyes off and crouched while leaving his angled bat up like a periscope. The ball lobbed off the cue end but landed just short of gully who charged in. Dogra's play against pace at the start of his innings belied his first-class numbers - 10,000-plus runs, an average over 48. But he persevered.

Dogra and Samad became comfortable as soon as Choudhary and Akash Deep were off the attack. They milked the spinners, Suthar and Saransh Jain, and with Mukesh Kumar struggling to land the ball in a consistent spot in the first session, they helped J&K score over a 100 runs before lunch. Samad mixed caution with enterprise as he got to fifty off 80 balls. It was a template that he had successfully deployed while scoring 748 runs (most for J&K) in last year's Ranji Trophy. His innings included a huge six down the ground against Suthar.File photo: Mukesh Choudhary picked up 5 for 78 for Rest of India•BCCI

But like Shikhar Mohan on the opening day, Samad fell in the second over after lunch, edging Mukesh Kumar to gully, to undo all his hard work. That opening allowed Choudhary to nick off wicketkeeper Kanhaiya Wadhawan before Mukesh Kumar trapped Abid Mushtaq lbw with DRS not coming to the latter's aid. When Akash Deep had Sahil Lotra caught at gully, it seemed RoI would escape with a lead of about 50.

Being short of batting support at the other end acted like a boon for Dogra. Even if he continued to hop and fend against Choudhary, Dogra managed to chip away at the deficit and completed his half-century off 113 balls. Eleven balls later, he used his feet against Jain to loft him over long-off for his first six. He then walloped Jain over midwicket for a four. Dogra added 64 for the ninth wicket with Nasir before he top-edged a short ball to fine leg. That gave Choudhary a deserving five-wicket haul.

Nasir's enterprising 48-run last-wicket partnership with Sunil Kumar dashed RoI's hopes of even a slender lead. With over an hour to go before stumps, RoI's batters adopted a very cautious approach which saw Mohan fall cheaply in the second dig. Sunil once again found his lengths. Those 15 overs that J&K bowled showed that conditions still weren't easy to bat. Certainly not as easy as Nasir had made them appear.