Boria Majumdar, Birmingham
Mohammed Siraj is the man of the moment for India. A six-wicket haul and he has set it up for the batters to take control. The question I want to ask is how many of us thought if he was Hindu or Muslim when he was leading the team back to the change room? How many of us even bothered about his religion or caste or other markers of identity?
All that mattered was he was the leader of our attack, filling in for the genius called Jasprit Bumrah in the crucial second Test. Needless to say, it wasn’t an easy task. Yet, he was up to it. He is the perfect underdog story, which we so identify with in India, and that’s what makes him so much more relevant. Siraj has failed on multiple occasions in the past, just like so many of us have. But he dared to push and eventually win. Can we all do the same? If Siraj can, we can. That’s the backstage lesson we need to imbibe.
My favourite Mohammed Siraj story is as follows.
The Indian team had just returned home victorious from Australia in January 2021. Every media professional was under pressure to speak to the boys exclusively. Siraj, needless to say, was the prize interview. Calls to him were going unanswered and that’s when R Sridhar, the team’s fielding coach, came to the rescue. Sridhar and Siraj had travelled to Hyderabad together and when Sridhar picked up the call, it was only natural that I’d request him to connect me to Siraj. Always helpful, Sridhar did so without any further delay and I had my man.
Like he had said before this Test, Siraj delivered in the absence of Jasprit Bumrah and picked up six wickets. Up to the batters now to build on the big lead and give Siraj & Co a chance to clean up Eng in the second innings
#ENGvsIND @BoriaMajumdar ✍️https://t.co/Wlj02wawAP
— RevSportz Global (@RevSportzGlobal) July 4, 2025
Siraj had just reached home and looked exhausted. While the video call connection wasn’t the best, I could see he was sitting on the floor with his suitcase open and things all over. “Abhi thodi der pehle ghar pahucha mein (came home a little while back),” he said with a smile. “Main graveyard gayatha pitaji se milne, isi liye der huwa (visited the graveyard to pay tributes to my father and got late because of that),” he was emotional. Here was a cricketer who was also a son and a brother. He had not seen his father for the last time and the first thing he did on landing in India was go to the graveyard to pay his last respects. “Wo agar aaj rehte to bahut khush hote (he would have been very happy to see this),” Siraj said with a smile that hardly concealed grief.
“Do you have the ball with which you picked your first fifer?” I asked. “Yes it’s here only. And I will keep it with me always,” he had said. What he did after that was pure innocence. “Aap baat karte rahiye (you carry on please),” he said and started searching for the ball. The suitcase was literally overturned and when he figured out that the ball wasn’t there, he disappeared for a few seconds. On return, he had a beaming smile on his face. “Yeh dekhiye (here you go),” he was showing the ball to me. “Maine is pe sab likhke rakha hai (I got everything written on this).”
He must have kept the Edgbaston first innings ball as well. And now he will write on it. Can he do it one more time in the second innings? If he does, we could title it, “From Brisbane to Birmingham, the Mohammed Siraj story”.
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