There is never a bad time to write about some people. Let me try and rephrase that. Some players are so special that any time is a great time to write on what they bring to the game. That breed is rare, and rightly so, part of an elite club that you can enter only by virtue of performances that stand the test of time.
A recent entrant to this club is Mohammed Shami, and I have had had the privilege of knowing him from a fairly young age. Club cricket in Bengal has attracted players from all over the country for the past few decades. Arun Lal, Ashok Malhotra, Chetan Sharma , Raman Lamba and many such stalwarts have come and plied their trade for the clubs of Kolkata. The first two have become an integral part of Bengal cricket and continue to contribute to it in various ways after having made Kolkata their home.
One such year, Shami also left his hometown in Uttar Pradesh to come and play for Town Club, one of the better first division clubs at the time. Now, they have gone further up the pecking order and are a real force to reckon with. Word got around that this lad could bowl. He had a couple of good performances in club cricket and was drafted into the Bengal Under-22 team. That was the first time I had a look at him and he seemed such a natural bowler. I thought to myself that he had obviously been under the astute guidance of some really good coach. His performances for the U-22s were very good and took him close to selection for the senior Bengal team.
Bengal has always had very good seamers, from the time of Subroto Guha and Samir Chakraborty, to the recent past when Ashoke Dinda, Ranadeb Bose and Shib Shankar Paul enjoyed considerable success in domestic cricket. Now, the state’s pace bowling is in the capable hands of Mukesh Kumar, Ishan Porel and Akashdeep. So, it was never going to be a cakewalk for Shami to get into the side. He had to wait for his turn, but once he got a proper run, he dethroned everybody.
Shami’s ascent to the Indian cricket team was as quick and swift as any I have known. I am sure I would not be in a minority if I said that he might have the steepest graph in this regard. For Bengal and India A, he was phenomenal. I spent a lot of time with him when he was picked up by Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL. He did not get much game time, but boy, was he good! In the nets, he had the full attention of all foreign and domestic players. The international players played him with respect, and the domestic players struggled to dominate him. He was pacy, on the money and swung the ball.
He had some phenomenal India A tours, and that usually means your entry into the Indian team is only a matter of time. And it was. He took to the national side like a fish to water. And it’s safe to say he has hardly looked back since. He has always been a very strong kid,
both physically and mentally. More often than not, it’s that mental toughness that you need to fall back on.
I learnt later that he has not been through any formal coaching, and yet his basics and the biomechanics of his bowling are so much in place. He will also be the first to admit that he did not pay a lot of attention to fitness and diet in his early days because he did not really need to. But at the back end of his career, he has completely changed himself. I have sat with him at the dining table as he polished off two plates of biriyani in a jiffy. Now, he will not have a grain of rice from his favourite biriyani preparation. For me, that too is mental toughness.
A tally of 40 wickets from 13 World Cup games is testament to his greatness. Just to put things in perspective, see the numbers for India’s other great bowlers – Zaheer Khan (44 from 23 matches), Javagal Srinath (44 from 33), Jasprit Bumrah (32 from 15) matches and Anil Kumble (31 from 18). Shami more than holds his own among such legends.
No fuss. No bold statements. He was almost not part of the World Cup plans, and when he made it, he sat out quite a few games. Not a word. ‘Work in silence and let success be the noise’ is clearly his mantra. But you can’t argue with 229 wickets from 64 Tests, or 180 victims in 96 ODIs.
I wish him well, not only for the cricketer he has become, but also for the person that he is. He excels at both.