Sharmarket on the Rise
COLOMBO: Ishant Sharma, the footballer, is a strange blend of athleticism and wrong-footedness. He meticulously runs behind the ball, but when he finally gets the ball — more a case of the ball finding him than the other way around — he undoes all the effort with a clumsy first touch, or Higuains the ball over everyone else, triggering banter among his teammates. He then stoically goes to retrieve the ball, but is nutmegged without the slightest difficulty. But Ishant keeps running, and running, sometimes screeching instructions to his teammates, his enthusiasm unstained by continuous failings.
There was a time this stood symbolic of his career too — endowed with most requisites a fast bowler could ever dream of, with a diligent work ethic and unsullied motivation to boot, but somehow lost in transition and made a mockery of by all and sundry. He seemed to be forever on study tour, but never graduating into the well-rounded strike bowler he was destined to be, and later the leader of a young pack, his glorified talents only manifesting in sporadic bursts than sustained spells. Thus was formed the crude myth of Ishant — the gifted bowler with lack of growth. His stats didn’t repudiate it either — 192 wickets at 37.58 wickets in 64 Tests. Among specialist bowlers with 50-plus Test caps, he is just behind former England off-spinner John Emburey and West Indies quick Fidel Edwards, with regard to the worst averages. Even if you weave in part-timers in the list, he is on an unflattering 12th.
A cursory glance at his bowling numbers would amply testify his wild career-swings — the proclivity to follow up an inspiring performance with a disjointed one, like a rookie. His supporters crooned he was wretchedly unlucky. His detractors mocked at his tendency to suddenly go invisible.
But since the New Zealand tour, he has given more assured evidence of morphing into a trustable strike bowler. His numbers (48 wickets at 36.35 in 13 matches) don’t exactly reveal the kind of menace he has demonstrated of late. Of course, there have been the occasional let-ups and the old wavering Ishant surfacing again, but by and large, he has not only been the most hostile of India’s fast bowlers in the span, but also the most consistent among them. And the lucklesness attributed to him wasn’t a cover-up excuse.
Like he has been in Sri Lanka. Both in Galle and Colombo, he has doubtlessly bowled with pace, aggression and hostility — bringing to the crease his own tunes of chin music, chest music, elbow music, bat-handle music and various other forms of unwanted music. He might not be getting the wickets like a strike bowler, but he’s certainly bowling like one.
His spell in the second session on the third day of the second Test was one of the turning points of the match. He bowled a tireless six-over spell with the second new ball, in which he dismissed Lahiru Thirimanne to halt a dangerous 127-run partnership from assuming monstrous, momentum-altering proportions. He then stung Chandimal on his helmet, before eventually dismissing him, triggering a collapse that turned out to be decisive. “Ishant’s effort in the heat — that spell set the game up for us,” praised leg-spinner Amit Mishra, who ran through the lower order.
That said, he has not been all bling and bluster. He has shown considerable application to vary his length. Thirimanne, in the aforementioned instance, was set up by a spate of short-of-length stock balls, before he pitched one fuller, drawing him into the drive. Hitherto, he was playing on the back-foot.
In the second innings, Ishant was playing the perfect foil to Ravichandran Ashwin, tying an end up, not with defensive lines but with attacking intent. “I’m happy to see the bowlers playing their roles. If you look at Ishant, he was in no rush to take wickets,” said skipper Virat Kohli.
As opposed to his footballing skills, Ishant is metamorphosing into a nuanced operator. Thank Lord, he doesn’t play football, for the sake of both sports.