Mohammed Shami is having a great run in IPL 2023. Will it extend to WTC and ODI World Cup?

Mohammed Shami’s form makes him an automatic choice for the World Test Championships (WTC) against Australia in June, besides making him the team’s mainstay in the one-day international (ODI) World Cup in India later this year. Yet Shami is less celebrated than Bumrah. (File photo)

In the last six matches of the Indian Premier League (IPL), Mohammed Shami has bowling figures of 3-25, 0-18, 0-18, 3-33, 4-11, 1-27. Only twice in 10 matches has he gone wicketless, but he has made up for it with his total of 18 wickets in the league so far. That’s put him on top of the bowlers’ charts, with teammate Rashid Khan, after Friday’s match in which Gujarat Titans (GT) beat Rajasthan Royals (RR).

Against Delhi Capitals (DC) on Tuesday, Titans’ Shami got Phil Salt off the first ball of the match and before one could settle in, had Delhi down to 23-5 in five overs. His career-best 4-11 reduced the Capitals down to 130-8, which Gujarat easily overhauled.

On ESPN Cricinfo, former Australian fast bowler Shaun Tait called Shami’s bowling “Test match length” with a “lovely wobble and enough seam” to bother batsmen.

Shami has twice taken 20 wickets in an IPL season, in 2020 and 2022, with 19 wickets each in the 2019 and 2021 seasons, making him one of the league’s consistent performers over the last five seasons. He will likely go past that 20-mark this season, considering GT still have four matches remaining in the group stages.

If Gujarat, winners last season and table toppers so far (till May 5, 2023), carry on till the playoffs, Shami gets more opportunities to show why, in the absence of Jasprit Bumrah, he is India’s number one pace bowler. The likelihood of GT progressing till the last stages of the league are strong, considering the second-highest wicket-taker in the league so far is GT’s Rashid Khan who, after Friday’s 3-14 off four overs, is on par with Shami with 18 scalps.

Shami’s form makes him an automatic choice for the World Test Championships (WTC) against Australia in June, besides making him the team’s mainstay in the one-day international (ODI) World Cup in India later this year. But Shami is less celebrated than Bumrah, for example, because his bowling, lacking in the uniqueness of Bumrah’s delivery stride, often gets unfairly overshadowed.

Bumrah, recovering from an injury, has not played a Test or an ODI since last July in England. Though statistically Bumrah and Shami are comparable—the former has a better bowling average across formats—Bumrah’s impact on a match is more noticeable than Shami’s.

In the past, Bumrah has often been preferred over Shami in ODIs—the latter had played only 14 matches out of 44 since the start of 2020 till the beginning of this year. But given a chance, his accuracy, seam-up bowling has been consistent and deadly in short spells. Against New Zealand in the second ODI at Raipur in January, Shami had figures of 3-18 in six overs that helped dismiss the visitors for 108. In the next ODI that he played, against Australia in Mumbai in March, Shami had 3-17 in six overs, dismissing the visitors for 188 in a five-wicket win.

Shami has been an intermittent member of the Indian ODI team, taking 162 wickets in 90 matches over a span of a decade. He played only three matches last year, none in 2021 and six the year before. But this year, the team has backed him, in the absence of Bumrah. While Shami has only 10 wickets in eight matches, two of those, against New Zealand and Australia, influenced the result of the matches.

The 32-year-old is proving his worth to the Indian team in more ways than one, bowling Test-match style, as Tait mentioned, in T20s which is giving GT significant breakthroughs. He has played only 23 T20 Internationals with 24 wickets, but clearly Shami finds the IPL to be a different ball game. Even though T20s are not his strongest format, Shami’s success in the IPL so far sets him up for the rest of the year in which the WTC and the World Cup are major tentpoles for cricket.

After the Raipur game against New Zealand, Shami reiterated the importance of managing the workload, especially of senior players, so they stay in the right zone before the World Cup and how he preferred playing matches to practicing.

“There’s still time for the WTC final and the ODI World Cup and as a player, it is not possible to think that far ahead,” Shami said in March after this three-wicket haul against Australia. “You need to be smart in terms of managing your workload. When you play international cricket, you know how much you need to work. You understand your body well and that’s why you should not think long term. I know my body well and can handle workload, so I am taking it match by match.”

One of the concerns with the IPL was the impact it would have on India’s key fast bowlers, Shami and Mohammed Siraj of the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB). Siraj has 15 wickets from nine matches so far (till Friday), indicating that the two pacers would rather work than rest. Since the WTC final is at the Lord’s and England has no reason to make a wicket friendly to the Indians, a seaming pitch with swing-friendly conditions would make Shami’s role that much more important, if India are to win that match. A successful IPL is a good start towards that target.