By Trisha Ghosal at Edgbaston
In Birmingham’s early summer haze, at a quiet Edgbaston corner where stories of grit are born in silence, Mohammed Siraj was scripting one of his own. No noise, no theatrics—just an intense rhythm of effort, focus, and repetition.
With India’s pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah likely to miss the second Test, the stage may be set for Siraj to finally grab the baton. Not just as a workhorse but as a leader of the attack. And if today’s net session was anything to go by, Siraj knows it.
He walked in, new cherry in hand, eyes locked on an invisible target. The first ball was textbook: short of a length, just outside off, zipping past with the kind of fizz that wakes a batter up. “Shabash Miyan!” someone from the support staff yelled. But Siraj wasn’t fishing for praise. He had locked into a different frequency.
For the next 45 minutes, Siraj ran in like it was the first morning of a Test match. Ball after ball, he attacked the corridor of uncertainty, and—crucially—maintained the discipline that has so often eluded him on match days.
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He troubled every batter. But it was his spell to captain Shubman Gill that stood out. Gill, who usually looks unflappable, was beaten multiple times. Three separate times, he walked up to Siraj with a look of ‘How did you do that?’ etched across his face and had quick chats with him.
He paused occasionally—quick words with Prasidh Krishna, a brief nod to Akash Deep—but the rhythm never broke. It was almost meditative. There was no crowd, no cameras, no media frenzy. Just Siraj, the ball, and that nagging fourth stump line.
This is sport, though. Practice isn’t performance. Effort alone isn’t reward. Siraj has never lacked heart. But for the first time in a long while, his heart and his discipline seemed to be moving in the same direction.
From July 2 to July 6, if he brings this same obsessive focus to the middle, this Test won’t just be about filling Bumrah’s shoes. It’ll be about Siraj finally stepping into his own.