JOIN USIshant appears to have found a captain and a dressing room which is bringing the best out of him in the World Twenty20 here.
Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni knows exactly where to put him in the bowling order and the Indian dressing room bears no resemblance to the one the young beanpole of a fast bowler was subjected to with the Kolkata Knightriders in the Indian Premier League (IPL) recently.
Ishant had bemoaned publicly about the debilitating effect of Kolkata Knightriders on him, both as a player and as an individual, before coming over to England and how it was the toughest spell of his life.
"Ever since I started playing cricket, this was the toughest phase of my life," he had said.
"I have never been part of such a long losing streak, and being in a dressing room where there were so many controversies was very taxing."
Ishant has been slotted into a role which is suiting him to the hilt. He has a specific role to cause turbulence in the opposition ranks in the middle overs.
His figures of 4-0-24-4 and 3-1-11-1 against New Zealand and Pakistan have been sort of a dry run and then two for 34 against Bangladesh in the lung opener seems to have provided adequate test to the theory.
Ishant bowled the 6th, 12th, 16th and the 20th over of the Bangladesh innings which was bit of a departure from the norm in the sense that he bowled the final over.
Bangladesh needed 41 runs from 6 balls in that final over and Dhoni thought it was as good a time as to see if Ishant is up to bowling in the death over.
Well the experiment only confirmed the view that Ishant is best kept away from bowling in the death overs as his first two deliveries were swung for sixes by little known Naeem Islam.
Dhoni feels Ishant doesn't quite bowl yorkers and isn't quite cut out at the moment to bowl in the initial or final overs. Ishant himself concedes that he has some way to go before he perfects this art.
"In T20, you need to have a good yorker and different kinds of slower balls," said Sharma, admitting there is a scope for improvement in this area.
Ishant's strength is his excellent control over his line and length as well as the movement he generates both in the air and off the pitch. He doesn't bowl too many bouncers which is kind of strange given his pace and control on his deliveries.
He not only has the quality but also the stamina as he has stood up to the test of continuous bowling of last few months quite well.
After three Tests in New Zealand, he hurled himself completely in the circus of IPL and now there is no dip in enthusiasm or pace in the World Twenty20.
Dhoni would need more of it in the coming matches as Ishant is likely to be a marked man of other teams who now realise that dismantling him is the key to get a measure of the defending champions.