Bhuvneshwar has swing and Umesh has pace but Shami is the best mix of both

On day three at Eden Gardens, India searched for quick wickets as Sri Lanka threatened to get away. Fourth ball after tea, and Mohammad Shami squared up Angelo Mathews with a beauty. Two overs later, he drew the batsman forward again and beat him. Two balls later, the edge came and flew through the gap between second slip and gully.

Play that on loop and you get the sum of Shami’s spell in that last session. He had looked rusty earlier on, but the cobwebs was dusted away and now his rhythm was back. Yet, the wickets’ column stayed at nought until stumps, whilst Umesh Yadav snapped up Mathews and Lahiru Thirimanne at the other end.

“It felt like today was the day of plays and misses. All of the season’s plays and misses, and no wickets were destined to come my way,” Shami told Bhuvneshwar Kumar (in a BCCI.tv interview) with a laugh. Beyond that lack of reward for a rich spell, he wouldn’t mind of course. After all, pacers like to hunt in pairs.

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A day after the 2016 World T20 final, a tall, lightly bearded man sat in the food lounge at the Kolkata airport. His athletic build gave inkling towards a career in sports, even if to the common eye, he wasn’t easily recognizable. It was Mohammad Shami, boarding a flight for Delhi to join up with the Daredevils for the upcoming Indian Premier League season.

He gorged on some northern fare for lunch. He has a penchant for it, seeking out any such restaurants in whichever part of the globe the Indian team is playing in, always in the friendly company of Wriddhiman Saha. Here, he sat alone, oblivious to the traveling world as the umpteen passengers were to his presence.

That word – oblivion – held most relevance for Shami momentarily. For someone who seeks it in public life, he was fighting that same demon in his career. Shami had last played for India in the 2015 ODI World Cup, almost twelve months ago. Returning from injury, that plane ticket was perhaps everything that mattered in his life that instant.

Fifteen months later, in the third Test at Pallekele, Shami charged in and tore through a hapless Sri Lankan top order. Upul Tharanga had no clue against his outswinger, while Dimuth Karunaratne, uncomfortable against the moving ball, managed to get confused enough to nick one that held its line. In the second innings, Shami terrorized the lower order with his pace.

It was a fine exhibition of pace bowling – movement, chance of length and pitching the ball seam up so it would extract extra bounce from the surface. So much so, it raised a pertinent question about the high-quality bowling on display – just how do you judge a great spell against a below-par opponent?

What if he was bowling to the likes of Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers? How would they play him? How would Shami react when better batsmen counter his pace and movement? Conjecture often over-rides the limitations of our sport’s haphazard international calendar. In the meantime, the adage ‘you can only beat what’s in front of you’ holds loud and true.

And so, this current Sri Lanka series has been a matter of repetition for Shami and his teammates. Consistency from the summer gone past, if you will, and the Kolkata Test proved so, as Niroshan Dickwella nearly found out at his team’s expense.

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Back in 2013, during Sachin Tendulkar’s farewell series, it was at Eden Gardens that Shami had first burst onto the scene. The West Indies found him too hot to handle, which helped find an immediate footing in India’s long-term plans. The brilliant pace bowling quartet that we see today was still in its infancy then, and Shami’s role was clear as day.

He had more pace than Ishant Sharma, more accuracy than Umesh Yadav and unlike Bhuvneshwar Kumar, he could move both the old and new ball. Then-skipper MS Dhoni saw him as an enforcer, irrespective of formats, a key element in his plans. So much so, during that stretched 2013-14 overseas cycle, Shami played the most number of games among these four bowlers – 10 Tests, 22 ODIs and 4 T20s. Only Ishant (10 Tests) and Kumar (19 ODIs) came close. In addition, he also played 7 matches in that 2015 World Cup.

At times though, it bordered on the ridiculous. When India failed to qualify for the finals of the Asia Cup (ODI format in 2014), Shami was even fielded in the dead-rubber against Afghanistan. While Dhoni deserves rich accolades for his leadership across formats, bowler management wasn’t really his strong point. And it was no wonder that two of Dhoni’s most influential pacers – Shami and Kumar – suffered long-term injuries towards the fag end of his captaincy.

“I lifted weights with my recovering leg and put more pressure on it so that I could test its strength. I didn’t want to take any chances on my comeback,” Shami later said during the 2016 West Indies’ tour.

In the first two Tests at Antigua and Jamaica, back after more than a year on the sidelines, he was a bowler transformed. There was certain change about his run-up – shorter strides that helped generate more speed as he burst onto the crease and extra bounce when he pitched it short. It was clearly modulated keeping in mind his physical exertions in the past.

“Fast bowling is about rhythm. His knee was affecting his run-up and once he sorted it, got his rhythm back, his confidence has grown,” said then-coach Anil Kumble, in St. Lucia, after Shami hit 140-plus consistently on his return to international cricket, as also picking 11 wickets in four Tests.

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Shami did miss the second half of India’s long 2016-17 home season through injury, again. But his effectiveness prior to that can’t be ignored. Since that Caribben tour, he has taken 34 wickets in 10 Tests against New Zealand, England (18 wickets in 6 Tests against these two teams) and Sri Lanka at average 23.70. Whilst coming in sub-continental conditions, it is a remarkable drop from his career average of 30.31. Statistics often don’t portray the whole picture, but in this case, they make a crystal clear representation.

He is an all-weather bowler, a pacer who can excel on different surfaces without the need to change things drastically. Even in this first Test at Kolkata, when he beat batsmen repeatedly on day three, all he did was bowl just a fraction closer on day four morning and the wickets came in a flourish.

Unlike Ishant, Shami doesn’t need to crank it up on flatter tracks. Unlike Umesh, he doesn’t need to bowl closer to the batsmen just to slow down their scoring. He has a natural knack of figuring out the proper length, particularly in Test cricket. That Kumar has made a step-up in pace (thanks to improved fitness) and reverse swing brings him closer to the qualities Shami already possesses. There is potential herein of a pairing that can anchor India’s Test aspirations overseas.

Even so, Shami’s importance cannot be denied. It is akin to saying that Murali Vijay and Ajinkya Rahane are impressive overseas batsmen. That Virat Kohli needs to come good if India want to make an impression in South Africa, England and Australia.

Yet, winning in alien conditions needs double anchorage, a dual pivot in batting as well as bowling. If it is Cheteshwar Pujara who must shoulder this responsibility at no.3, then Shami is undoubtedly the most vital cog in India’s bowling attack for the next twelve months or so.