There's more to Mohammed Shami than just the seam

While it’s easy to deduce that Shami’s strength is his skill, the last three years or so have shown that there’s more to him than a pretty seam

In a team stretching the limits of tattoos and hairdos, Mohammed Shami’s aesthetic is plain to the point of boring. The slight paunch and the receding hairline doesn’t help the Bengal pacer’s narrative either.

But he isn’t in the side to win a pageant nor strike it rich as a model in deodorant advertisements, he is in the side because he can pick up 200 Test wickets in his 55th Test match at a strike rate of around 50 and an average of around 27.

He’s an automatic selection because he nonchalantly jogs through 16 overs for 5 wickets - his first fifer since 2019 - against an adept South African batting line-up. These were his figures on Tuesday when India bowled South Africa out for 197 and established their stronghold in the opening Test. In the second innings, he ended with three wickets for 63 runs in 17 overs.

While it’s easy to deduce that Shami’s strength is his skill, and there’s plenty of truth to that, the last three years or so have shown that there’s more to him than a pretty seam, unreal control or that wicked bouncer.

Alleged of adultery, domestic violence, rape and match-fixing by his wife in 2018, Shami was suddenly not wanted. An under-pressure Board of Control for Cricket in India decided to withhold his contract. Shami was in a dark place and that mood translated to him piling on the weight and incurring more injuries than he was used to. Former coach Ravi Shastri revealed in subsequent interviews that he and then bowling coach Bharath Arun told Shami to use the anger instead of running from it.

Even as most eyes rested on him with a hint of suspicion, the team wasn’t going to give up on him. Feeling wanted, he levelled a piece of agricultural land in the village of Sahaspur Ali Nagar, Uttar Pradesh and turned it into a running track to return to full fitness. He didn’t want to go down the route many former cricketers from Uttar Pradesh had in the past and he was too young to let his private troubles come in the way of a good thing.

Come 2021, Shami was leaner, smiled a lot more and could whip his wrists over better than ever before. The result was a good World Test Championship Final against New Zealand and a fine series in England. But it isn’t just his balance on the release or his staggering stamina which stood out in these Tests, including the ongoing one, it’s that he’s bowling full enough to change his own luck.

For years, Shami has been that one bowler who beats the bat with enviable consistency and yet doesn’t get as many wickets. Two hundred wickets is a lot. In fact, he is only the 11th Indian to the mark, but watching a Shami spell used to be a nail-biting exercise because he was always beating the outside edge or getting batters to hop without a wicket to go. This is also why he has a lot of four-wicket hauls and three-wicket spells but only six fifers in an eight-year career.

These days, he bowls fuller, and when you have his control on lateral ball movement, you get batters to play the wrong line more often than not. And, he hasn’t let up on his pace so the bouncer comes out just as nasty. And when you give someone of Shami’s calibre a pitch as effervescent as the one at SuperSport Park, it’s must-watch television. Actually, Shami may have transcended the phase where the pitch, conditions, situation or opponents matter. And that’s why he belongs in the Indian side, not because he looks the part.

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