Fast bowlers peddling gentle looseners before getting into their rhythm and batters offering the forward defensive shot until they get their eye in are all part of cricket’s quaint traditions. But the modern era, with its accent on the quick and the settled, instant noodles and hot tea bags, tends to tweak orthodox dogmas, marrying the classical with the contemporary.
To see Mohammed Shami in full flight is to savour these complex realities. Often deemed an able foil to Jasprit Bumrah, a buddy to Mohammed Siraj and the ally to Umesh Yadav, Shami’s uniqueness is often overlooked at worst or tends to be taken for granted at best. Be it the first over or stepping in as first change, Shami steams in, gaining speed, not for him the eternal winnowing steps of Bumrah before the sudden explosion or the antelope’s gait of Siraj.
A bowling action pleasing on the eye ensues and the ball homes in, like a pigeon returning to its roost, to that exact uncertain spot for innumerable batters. On and around off-stump, angling in, and the willow wielders tap their inner Hamlet and perhaps whisper: to drive or not to drive. In that split second shrouded in confusion, the delivery becomes either the seducer drawing the edge or the sledge hammer thudding into pads or just dismantling stumps.
