He went on to perform consistently as a batsman scoring heavily in the inter-school Giles Shield tournament for the Under-16s making a triple century when he was 15.

He carried the form into the Harris Shield under-19 tournament scoring consistently "showing signs of being another Tendulkar in the making."

It was during this time that he began shifting focus to his bowling after it was "pointed out to [him] that it would be hard to make it into the Mumbai team as a pure batsman, and that he stood a better chance as an all-rounder".

As a child, Agarkar idolized pacers Kapil Dev, Michael Holding and Ian Botham; later also taking a liking to Allan Donald.

[9] The positive start to his early career, Indian fans were hopeful of him forming a strong bowling partnership with Javagal Srinath.

The emergence of Ashish Nehra in 1999 and Zaheer Khan in 2000 created further competition for pace bowling options especially in home conditions.

Frequent injuries to Srinath, Nehra, and Agarkar meant India struggled with pace bowling resources.

He was an important part of the hugely successful Indian team in 2002 and 2003 with Agarkar contributing some memorable performances with the bat and the ball.

During this period, he was also a member of the Indian team which finished in the runner-up spot in the 2003 World Cup in South Africa, although he did not play in a single game throughout the tournament.

One of the notable performances in the domestic cricket came in the 2009–10 Ranji trophy finals against Karnataka in which he took 5 wickets in the second innings ensuring a narrow win for Mumbai.

[12][13] John Wright used to send Agarkar as a pinch hitter in ODIs up the order to increase the scoring rate.

Early in his career, Agarkar broke Dennis Lillee's world record for the fastest 50 wickets in ODIs, achieving the feat from only 23 matches.

Agarkar also holds another ODI record, which is the quickest in terms of fewest matches played to take 200 wickets and complete 1000 runs.

In the semi-final against Services, he scored 145 and made a 246-run 7th wicket partnership with wicketkeeper Aditya Tare (120) to rescue Mumbai from 169/6, and take the total to 454/8 declared.