Cryogenic treatment of high speed steel is commonly used as an add-on treatment to conventional hardening and triple tempering treatment. this kind of treatment has been reported to improve the wear resistance of high speed tool steel. the improvement in wear property is attributed to the microstructural changes due to cryotreatment. but in case of microalloyed steel, this treatment is not generally used to improve mechanical and wear properties. in the present investigation, one group of specimens of medium carbon microalloyed steel was normalised (n) at 980 0c and other group was hardened (h) at 980 0c and then both groups were cryogenic treated (c) at -185 0c for varying soaking times ranging from 0 to 24 hours followed by soft tempering (t) at 100 0c and 150 0c respectively for n and h for 1 hour. the treated specimens with varying cryosoaking time were observed for microstructural changes using optical microscopy. hct 24 specimen shows tensile strength of around 1600 mpa which was higher than any nct specimen. hardness of hct specimens was higher than nct specimens with increasing trends. but exact correlation between wear behavior and cryosoaking time could not be found out. possibility of carbides at the grain boundaries was seen by optical microscope.