CHENNAI: “In my 10-year career, I had never taken two full months off,” Mohammed Siraj tried to explain about the last month where he had struggled to find his old self. He had spent a little over three days of play on the field in hot and gruelling conditions at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai, during the Duleep Trophy final. Having bowled 41 overs across two innings for South Zone, understandably he looks spent.
Right from the second Test in Sri Lanka and through the course of the final, where he returned wicketless in first innings before taking 1/47 in the second against East Zone, questions were raised over his form, rhythm, how his pace was not up to the mark and why Siraj is not bowling like the Siraj the cricketing world knows.
It is not that the 32-year-old does not know what went wrong. In fact, he is very much aware of it. Siraj, like many of his generation, comes from the mold of fast bowlers who have trained their bodies to put down the overs regularly to be in rhythm. So, when he is not finding that zone, the only way for him to get out of the rut is to run in all day and get the overs in. He might not be hitting the full pace. His body might now be feeling like it. The conditions may be hot, humid and the pitch may be flat. Siraj would still show up and try his best by giving his all in his bowling. That is just how he operates.
So, when he had a two-month-long break after the Indian Premier League — Siraj is a Test regular but not so much in other formats — the Hyderabad pacer’s body struggled to cope with it. "Every bowler's body is different, but mine doesn't handle long breaks well. A short breather is fine, but in my 10-year career, I had never taken two full months off. I was working out in the gym and bowling occasionally, but no amount of practice can replicate match intensity. It was a new experience, but a valuable learning curve for me going forward," Siraj explained.
Not getting two months off in ten years might seem exaggerated, but it is not. Since his Test debut in 2020, Siraj has bowled the second-most number of overs (1640) across formats as a pacer, only behind Mitchell Starc (1795.2). The next Indian on the list is Jasprit Bumrah with 1482 overs — 148 over fewer than Siraj. And that is despite Siraj not playing in every ODI and T20I series over the last couple of years.
So, when he came back from a prolonged break to play Tests in Sri Lanka, it took time for him to get the rhythm back. The 32-year-old reiterated that only the individual knows their body best and for him, the more he bowls, the better he gets. "I'm purely a rhythm bowler. If I'm not in sync, I simply can't explode through the crease. That was the struggle in Sri Lanka—my run-up felt disjointed. Some strides were too short, others were too long, and that broke my flow and cost me pace.
“Heading into this game, finding that flow was my primary goal. Playing this match (Duleep) helped tremendously. After two months off, your body doesn't react the same way — everything feels a beat slower. Getting through this game got my body moving again and brought my rhythm right back. If I don't bowl extended spells, my rhythm won't return. The break left my body feeling sluggish at the crease, so I told both myself and Tilak (Varma) that I wanted to bowl as long as possible. I bowled spells of 10 and 11 overs, and that's exactly what locked me back into rhythm,” he elaborated.
In between all this, what also helped Siraj was having his former partner-in-crime Mohammed Shami at the same venue. He caught up with the veteran, who was playing for East Zone after two days of toil where he did not get any wickets. What more, he was bowling short, struggling to get the pace up and did not look threatening. Siraj explained how Shami encouraged him to keep bowling to get the rhythm back. “In the first innings, Siraj wasn’t quite finding his natural rhythm compared to how he bowled later. I just reminded him that to get back on top, he needed to return to his core strengths. When your run-up and rhythm are in sync, your line and length fall into place automatically,” Shami explained.
And it worked. Though he had only one wicket to show, Siraj found his rhythm and confidence. “In the first innings, the pitch looked fresh, so I tried to bowl too fast. Because I was forcing it, my rhythm was off. In the second innings, I told myself to forget the outcome and just run in with a good, natural rhythm. The moment I did that, the old Siraj was back in action, and the ball started coming out beautifully,” Siraj reflected.
