Adelaide: For Mohammad Shami, who destroyed the West Indies top order at the Western Australia Cricket Ground (WACA) on Friday, it was a great moment. Former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly, who had played a vital role in his success, was watching him perform from the commentary box.
Shami, whose parents hail from the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, got selected into the Bengal team in 2010 due to Ganguly’s initiative. It was Shami’s dream to be at the nets and bowl to Ganguly and on Friday, he had Ganguly praising the strapping seam bowler for his haul of three for 35.
Many couldn’t believe that it was an Indian pacer who was making West Indies batsmen struggle when Shami kept beating them repeatedly with tight line and movement. The fact that he was returning from an injury was not at all visible in his bowling. In fact, he recovered in time for the match with an ultrasound-guided injection.
Speaking to BCCI tv, Shami revealed how difficult it was not be carried away by the bounce of the WACA wicket and hit the right spots. “It was really important not to get carried away by the bounce. Since the wicket had so much of bounce on it, the pacers tried to bang a lot of deliveries short and in the bargain couldn’t help but give away wides. In our case, we were getting a lot of wickets by bowling short and we wanted to use the bounce. We would not have wanted to give that many away but we were getting wickets off those bouncers,” he said.
The day before the West Indies match, Shami had bowled for nearly an hour at the nets. He was not attempting to bowl faster but make the batsmen play. Revealing his plan later, the mainstay of Indian attack said: “Our plan against the West Indies top order batsmen was to keep things tight and not give them freebies.”
The biggest advantage for Shami is his fearlessness. Though he is only 24 years old, he has been a good learner of the game and now knows how to bowl according to the batsmen. He elaborated on how he managed to keep Dwyane Smith and Chris Gayle calm: “Smith and Gayle are stroke players and love to play their strokes in the initial part of the innings. We wanted to keep both under check. For that it was important to put them under pressure. We did get them into a lot of trouble. Once we got them under pressure, maintaining that pressure was very important. We had to hit the right line and lengths which we did successfully.”
A lot of thought had gone into dismissing the West Indies batsmen, especially Gayle. “We wanted Gayle out soon. We know he has a reputation of being troubled by the outswingers, but at the same time it was important to mix things up with him. We did that well, kept him under pressure and got him out.”
A clam person off the field, Shami is aggressive on it and can be a coach’s delight as he can perform according to the plan. That makes up for all the inexperience and any other possible shortcomings.
