Image Credit- AP
Are we really supposed to be shocked? Is anyone
genuinely going to be shocked by it?
Currently dominating the World Cup in India is
Mohammed Shami, who can produce A+ overs at any point in an innings, is skilful
in all manner of devious and delightful ways, and sends the ball relentlessly
towards the stumps.
For nine wickets. 4.47 as the economy rate. 8.44 on
average. There isn’t a bowler in this World Cup with figures like these.
So that it is no longer up in the air, let us address
the warning right away: In this event, Shami has only participated in two games
thus far. One of those came against a very bowler-friendly team in Lucknow on a
very bowler-friendly track, in the sense that England has been distributing
their wickets like happy old people with Halloween candy all throughout the
tournament.
On a batting surface at Dharamsala, however, there was
also Shami’s 5 for 54 from 10 overs, against a New Zealand side whose batting
order has frequently proven itself to be a formidable force even without Kane
Williamson.
So much of Shami’s nastiness was captured in the
performance. Will Young was removed from the game in the ninth over due to a
tiny seam that was deflected back into his stumps by the hitter, who had
initially planned to chop it through off. Shami rolled his fingers on the ball
in the 34th over that broke the massive Daryl Mitchell-Rachin Ravindra stand.
The ball remained somewhat lower as a result of this in addition to slowing it
slower. Ravindra did not even come close to crossing the boundary when he struck
it into the palms of long on.
Since all of Shami’s greatest strengths almost exactly
line up with a venn diagram that plots the characteristics that make seamers
effective in India, we are not particularly surprised. He is tough to get
beneath at the conclusion of a match, can seam it when necessary, and did he
just show a tiny amount of reverse swing towards the end of that match in
Dharamsala?
The question of what prevented him from returning for
so long now arises. How did India come up with a World Cup starting eleven when
Shami wasn’t among the first five names to be entered? “Balance” is
the rationale behind his exclusion, a concept that occasionally has a greater
psychological impact than it does on the cricket pitch.
Balance, but for whom? Whose duty is it to make the
runs anyhow, the top seven? Top-order risk-taking does not always require
insurance in the form of batting depth. Who else would you support at the World
Cup if you had to choose one attack to defend any score, other than India’s?
More accurately, Shami is in India now because his
numbers are unstoppable. Shami has claimed 40 wickets at an economy rate of
just under five and an average of 14.07 in 13 World Cup matches over three
editions. Shami’s average leads all bowlers with more than 20 World Cup wickets
without a doubt.
There aren’t many quicks in the world you would prefer
have on your side than Shami as the tournament nears its conclusion and the
playing squares worn and the bounce lessens. Maybe a bumrah first. But not long
afterward, Shami, with his fresh hair, kept going after those stumps with the
same tenacity.