India, Feb. 26 -- Before the final, Auqib Nabi couldn't sleep like he usually did. He kept thinking about history being on the line, going to the ground and celebrating. And he may have brought Jammu & Kashmir close to that dream.

It was a nearly flat track in Hubballi. The kind where batters settle down and cash in. Karnataka's batting order, on paper, looks like it could eat any attack alive. Yet even before the team travelled, J&K bowling coach P Krishna Kumar had made a quiet, assured prediction.

"We are confident that we will take 20 wickets," he told HT. It was not bluster or self-hype. It was belief in his bowling attack and most of all, in its spearhead Nabi.

From the moment he ran in on the third day, there was a shift in temp...