When Naman Dhir was in eighth standard, his father asked him a question. Did he want to see his name on the school honours board or on TV?
“TV,” Naman said.
“I told him we would support him,” Naresh Kumar Dhir told The Indian Express.
The second conversation came in 2021. Naman had not been picked for the Punjab side, and the family was thinking of sending him to his elder sister Sheenam in Edmonton, Canada. “Papa, give me one more year,” Naman said.
On Sunday, Dhir Sr thought of both conversations. Naman was named India’s impact player of the five-match T20I series against hosts New Zealand, and collected the medal in the dressing room.
“To see him now play for India is a special feeling, and the result of his hard work,” he said.
A childhood dream and a coach’s vision, followed by a tragedy
Growing up in the Mohalla Pukran locality of Faridkot, Naman played with neighbourhood kids in the street. His father worked at a medical shop, and Naman did well in studies too. Dhir Sr, who later ran a surgical wholesale business, remembers that the boy had only one demand from his maternal grandmother, Satya Sethi. “Naman would always tell her to bring a new bat for him,” he says.
In 2008, Naman was spotted playing near his home by Arunvir Devgan, the Faridkot Cricket Association’s physical trainer and a former junior team-mate of Yuvraj Singh. Devgan asked the parents to send their son to train under coach Gagan Sidhu. Within years he was in the Faridkot U-14, U-16 and U-19 teams, a minor district in the Punjab Cricket Association’s lower division.
“I was impressed by his bat grip and follow-through as a young eight-year-old. I took him to Gagan Sidhu. Sidhu paji worked a lot on his footwork. Naman once scored a quadruple century in a two-day U-16 match against Barnala. He would shift to Patiala to train in the off season, and he knew minor-district players had to score heavily to make the Punjab teams. Once, when Naman had an exam in 11th, the teachers told his parents he could not miss it. But his father had so much faith in him that he made Naman skip the exam and play the match,” says Devgan.
Naman Dhir’s parents Naresh Kumar Dhir and Nirupama Dhir. (Special arrangement)
Naman made the Punjab Ranji Trophy team in 2022 and hit two hundreds that season. In 2023 he was the second-highest run-getter in the Sher-E-Punjab league, with 466 runs at a strike rate of 192.56, and took eight wickets with his off-spin. The same year, Sidhu died of a kidney ailment. Mumbai Indians picked him for Rs 20 lakh ahead of the 2024 IPL. He made a ten-ball 20 on debut against Gujarat Titans, hitting Afghanistan’s Azmatullah Omarzai for three fours and a six. Later that year, they used the RTM card at the mega auction to retain him for Rs 5.25 crore.
“Naman was playing a match in Gujarat when he received the news of Gagan Sidhu’s death. His bond with Gagan was like a godparent’s, and he cried a lot that day. We wish Gagan was alive to see Naman play in the India jersey,” says Dhir Sr.
Breaking the shackles
Naman made 252 runs at a strike rate of 182.61 in the 2025 IPL, and 318 at 147.22 in this year’s. After the IPL he topped the Sher-E-Punjab T20 league, with 657 runs at a strike rate of 208.92 and seven wickets for winners Amritsar Soormas. Soormas batting coach Manish Sharma, a former U-19 World Cup winner, first saw Naman in 2017-18.
“Punjab had a triangular series of major district and minor district teams. That was the first time I saw Naman batting. He had good basics and was technically very sound. I remember recommending him to the selectors as a prospect. During the 2023 Sher-E-Punjab season, he showed his range of shots, including the pull, and his ability to counter short balls,” says Sharma.
Days after Soormas won the title, Naman was called up for India’s T20 and ODI sides for the home series against West Indies. He showed his hard hitting in a six-ball 24 in the rain-abandoned fifth T20I at Bengaluru. In New Zealand he played an unbeaten, match-winning 15-ball 42 at number seven in the first T20I, then a 17-ball 31 in the second. He finished the series with 138 runs at a strike rate of 157.8.
Sharma sees Naman as a long-term middle-order option for India’s white-ball team. “Naman decides early how to tackle pace, and he showed that in New Zealand too. He has worked on playing spin as well, and it was on display in Sher-E-Punjab, where he hit them with a straight bat.”
Naresh Kumar Dhir had asked his son whether he wanted to see his name on TV. On Sunday, he watched it there.