With eye on Aus comeback, Shami goes through the paces
When it comes to injury-induced layoffs, Shami is no stranger to staying away from cricket for long phases
Kolkata: When it comes to injury-induced layoffs, Shami is no stranger to staying away from cricket for long phases. Particularly unforgettable is the 2015 ODI World Cup that Shami played braving pain before undergoing surgery on his left knee and staying in rehab for 10 months. Shami was 25 then. This time, a surgery on his right Achilles tendon has again kept Shami out of action for another 10 months since the 2023 ODI World Cup. Recovery in ageing athletes takes more time. So it’s not surprising when Shami himself didn’t give himself a deadline for a comeback.
“It’s difficult to say when I will be back,” Shami was quoted as saying during his felicitation ceremony by East Bengal club here earlier this month. “I am trying hard, but hopefully you will get to see me in Bengal colors before I don the India jersey again. I will come to play two-three matches for Bengal and will come fully prepared for it.”
Shami’s last Test was the World Test Championship final against Australia at The Oval last June. And his aim, quite understandably, is to make the cut for the Australia tour that begins in November. “He wants to be on that tour,” Snehashish Ganguly, Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) president, said in an interaction on Monday. “But he has to play Ranji Trophy to prove himself.”
Now that Shami doesn’t find a place in the squads for the Duleep Trophy, it’s more or less certain he wouldn’t feature in the home Test series against Bangladesh, starting in mid-September, as chief selector Ajit Agarkar had hoped. “September 19 is the first Test and that was always the goal. I don’t know if that is his timeline for recovery, will have to ask the guys at the NCA about that,” Agarkar had said before India’s departure for the tour of Sri Lanka in July.
The proper extent of Shami’s ankle injury wasn’t ascertained initially as he was included in India’s Test squad for the two-match series in South Africa in December-January. But once it worsened, Shami had to be withdrawn. He went to London for surgery after experiencing swelling on his right ankle, ultimately ruling him out of the IPL as well. The recovery has been slow—Shami wasn’t able to bend his body completely even in June—but the last video posted on his social media shows him running full tilt at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru.
The Duleep Trophy exclusion seems like a cautionary measure, and for good reason too, given Shami has already undergone several knee surgeries in the past. With India set to play 10 Tests over the next five months—five against Bangladesh and New Zealand at home and five in Australia—Shami still has enough time to prove his fitness in Ranji Trophy, play one or two Tests against New Zealand and land in Australia in peak condition. And it’s not as if India would be left in a lurch.
Three spinners in home Tests has been normalised to such an extent that Jasprit Bumrah didn’t have to play a home game till well into his third year of Test cricket. New faces are steadily coming in too. Shami’s absence in the past year had allowed for the Test debuts of Mukesh Kumar (in the Caribbean) and Akash Deep (in Ranchi against England) and both went largely well. Bumrah-Siraj, Akash-Siraj or Bumrah-Mukesh, there are quite a few combinations to work with in the next five Tests unless India decide to add the recovering Prasidh Krishna and Arshdeep Singh to the Test mix. But Shami is still irreplaceable on many counts, especially in Australia.
Rarely does anyone pepper that stifling fourth-stump line as relentlessly as Shami. The length too—just short of natural on Australia’s bouncier pitches—draws batters into false shots more than anyone else. His bouncer is under-celebrated. His faith in the ability to beat the bat with pure pace is under-rated. But no one can ever deny how Shami can invade batters’ personal spaces with his seam movement. Not always does it produce a wicket, but Bumrah will be the first to acknowledge how Shami has been the facilitator of some of his best spells in Australia.
No surprise then that Shami and Bumrah had accounted for 11 wickets in the Adelaide win in 2018-19, before sharing 12 in the Melbourne victory. They missed out on an encore in 2020-21 after Shami fractured his wrist during the first Test in Adelaide. This time though, expect India to pull out all the stops to ensure Shami makes that flight to Australia.