India’s new spearhead Mohammed Shami, who has led the incredible makeover of Team India’s bowling unit, credits his climb up the ladder of success to his cool headed captain MS Dhoni.
“I’m lucky that I’ve debuted under him in all formats be it T20, Test or ODI. He doesn’t give any tension, leaves me free to take my decisions. If I make a mistake, he advises me very coolly and the best thing about him is that he doesn’t ever get angry, deals with all issues very smoothly. It’s good for a bowler that the captain backs him and that’s the biggest plus for me,” he said at Eden Park on the eve of India’s match against Zimbabwe.
Shami, who has grown in the team taking inputs from senior players and spending time bowling according to the wicket and the conditions, said when he was playing domestic cricket he would always wonder what it would be like once he joined team India but “I feel it’s better than domestic matches and that has given me a lot of confidence.”
Shami has been the cynosure of all eyes with former greats like Sir Richard Hadlee saying his pace and line have been very impressive. Ask him the secret of this turnaround and he says: “The motivation is to win the World Cup. Everyone back home expects us to win, whether they are fans in India or elsewhere and our focus is also on that”.
Moulding his bowling according to the format and the wicket, Shami has transformed since the Test and Tri-series, turning into India’s leading wicket-taker at the World Cup with 12 wickets, including his best thus far — 4 for 35 against Pakistan in Adelaide. He, however, says that he bowls “depending on the situation and the plans for a particular wicket. There is a Team plan and an individual plan and we follow them… The tour has been long. When we were playing Tests, we had a different mindset and a different line and length to bowl. We change our mindset according to the format we are playing as also our plan and bowling,” he explained.
Taking the “good days and bad days” in his stride, Shami says what works for him best is to take note of the flaws and work on them during practice and also “talk to senior players, take their inputs and change accordingly”.
If 2011 was all about winning it for Sachin Tendulkar, this time too, Shami says, the motivation levels are no less. “Our motivation is that we’ve to win World Cup…. That’s the focus. We want to work at winning just like we did in the 2011 edition.”
The Indian bowling unit has done well to adapt to conditions fast and Shami says at this level of professional cricket it should not take much time to change the bowling strategy from big grounds to smaller ground which the team is playing on now in New Zealand.
“Bowling on big grounds means we have more options to bowl high and give more variation. But in smaller grounds there is very little margin of error,” he said.
Shami, who celebrated his 25th birthday on Monday last, says there is no comfort zone in the international level of cricket. “We want to have continuity and go from win to win. The plan (against Zimbabwe) is to not give too much chance to come into a fight and make less and less mistakes,” he said.