When Jammu and Kashmir beat Bengal by six wickets to qualify for their first-ever Ranji Trophy final, the victorious players hoisted head coach Ajay Sharma onto their shoulders. Chants of “bhaiyon mein bhai kaisa ho, Ajju bhai jaisa ho” resounded across the ground in Kalyani. For a man who had spent fifteen years being erased — from cricket, from conversations, from his own son’s career — it was an unlikely place to be reborn: on the shoulders of young men from Jammu and Kashmir, in a ground in Bengal, with his name on their lips. Sharma, a battle-hardened Delhi cricketer who once scored first-class hundreds with almost embarrassing ease, could only let the moment wash over him. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW VIDEO The journey from Ajay Sharma the cricketer-turned-coach to ‘Ajju bhai’, though, was anything but straightforward. “I would say this is the rebirth of Ajay Sharma,” the 61-year-old told The Indian Express. Sidelined for fifteen years before a Delhi court absolved him of match-fixing charges in 2016, Sharma’s redemption has unfolded in step with J&K …