by Arunabha Sengupta
The 2013 Mumbai Test is of course recalled as the occasion of Sachin Tendulkar’s final foray in international cricket.
However, if we look back at the final moment of action in that particular Test, we will recall the master positioned in the unfamiliar position of leg slip to a fast bowler, one of the fielders in the formidable leg trap set for the surprisingly fast Mohammed Shami.
Leg-trap — not quite the Bodyline field because of the fielding restrictions, but similar. It was not that Shami was bowling Bodyline, but he was making the ball reverse … in a manner seldom seen before.
That Test saw Shami picking up the first wicket and the last. India still depended on spinners at home and this new weapon was just into his second Test match.
Since then he has evolved into one of the major wickettaking options of India, be it home or away. 180 wickets at 27.36 is by some distance the best average by an Indian pace bowler with more than 100 wickets. The strike rate of 49.4 is better by a bigger margin.
In India his 61 wickets have come at 21.08 at a strike rate of 42.4. No Indian pacebowler has been as phenomenal at home. The one closest to him is Umesh Yadav with 96 wickets at 24.54 with a strike rate of 45.7. (It also underlines how fascinating the Indian thinktank has been in recent times in distributing the pace attack home and away.)
In ODIs too he is at the top of the table, his strike rate better than any other.
It is, as Abhishek Mukherjee points out, surprising that Shami is hardly ever chosen in the many All-Time Indian XIs that one sees, especially during lockdowns… He remains underrated —actually underrated, without that being his brand-essence.
Mohammed Shami was born on 3 Sep 1990. One hopes with time Indians will wake up to realise the incredible value he brings into the side.