Mohammed Siraj: Meteoric rise of a hero Indian cricket deserves

What can be the worst tragedy to endure for a man in his mid-20s? Also, what can be the biggest occasion for a young cricketer on an international tour representing his country? While a Test debut can be the answer of the second question for a majority of cricketers across the world, the answer to the first question can vary. In the case of Mohammed Siraj though, the answer to the first questions was the tragic and soul-wrenching loss of father. 

When he was bought in the IPL auction, his father who was showing an immense amount of grit to aid his son in pursuing his passion for cricket, was ecstatic along with the whole family. But, Siraj knew his father had his eyes on the big prize, and hence when he would have been weighing the option of withdrawing himself from the tour with the news of father’s demise, his wishes must have outweighed his pain and emotions.

 It must have been a horrible moment for Siraj who had to pick one option among seeing his father’s face for one last time and playing on for India, the goal his father had his eyes on and Siraj emerged as a strong-headed person who had the guts to contemplate preferring pragmatism over his emotions in the phase of grief. 

The option of giving it in the moments of grief could well have been an easier option for him considering he is part of the system that allowed the captain and the best batsman in the lineup to take paternity leave in mid of the tour considering the place families hold in players’ life irrespective of how bigger are stakes on their professional lives. 

But, how could he do that? How could he choose an easier option being the proud son of a father who did not take an easier option of suggesting his son to focus on the study and disheartening him away from cricket? Giving up in the wake of tough choices could not have been a fitting tribute to his father and ultimately, Siraj clung on to the larger picture and as one of the renowned basketball coaches, John Woodenit once said ‘Sports don’t build character; they reveal it’, he revealed the kind of mindset he has based his career on.

All these stories of overcoming grief and personal tragedy can’t guarantee your success on the field and if that was the case, among the 135 crore population of the country, there will be millions of people with such heartwarming stories but they all can’t succeed at the competitive level. To succeed at that highest level, and especially in international cricket, you need to back all those fascinatingly inspiring stories with performances, substantive ones at that on the field to leave a lasting impression.

Siraj wasn't in the reckoning to feature in the playing Xi starting the series although India were missing the ever so reliable Ishant Sharma. Senior-pro Umesh Yadav was picked to replace Sharma for the first Test at Adelaide, and for Siraj to make a mark on the series, and actually achieve something if not great for the price he had paid by not going back home. 

The god must have had enough of the pain given to him, and then it was the chance of one of his teammates to deal with some of it as Mohammed Shami fractured his arm and got ruled out of the series after the Adelaide Test that ended as a nightmare for his team. Then too Siraj has to stake a claim for his place in the Xi to replace Shami, but he was more incisive in warm-up games and net sessions to edge out Navdeep Saini to earn the right to make his Test debut at the MCG.

Australia won the toss and the stand-in skipper Ajinkya Rahane had to marshall his troops along to check Australia for running away with the game. Rahane seemed to be reluctant to use Siraj in the first session of that Test in order to ease him through and Jasprit Bumrah and Ravichandran Ashwin made sure that the captain’s plan of providing Siraj a smooth introduction into Test cricket worked perfectly well.

There must have been a certain sense of anxieties among Indian fans when they had seen Shami walking out of the ground in serious pain as the memory of a limping Zaheer Khan walking off from the Lord’s a decade ago and India never coming back in the series against England almost a decade ago has never vanished from their minds. The fans must have been anxious about how a rookie will compensate for the loss of someone as reliable as Shami let alone the task of filling his boots. 

Indian pacers don’t have a good history of starting their careers on high in overseas Tests, and in a way Siraj has to defy yet another oddity, but he was on the money from the word go as the very first ball in his Test career pitched in and around off stump and teased the batsman Travis Head into playing, but the left-hander was circumspect at that point. 

Siraj was not picked right away from the domestic circuit on the basis of raw talent and express pace, but his perseverance in the longer format in the Ranji Trophy and later on with the India-A team had put him the contention to be one of the frontrunners to replace the trio of Jasprit Bumrah, Ishant Sharma and Shami. All those long spells in first-class cricket were showing up in his control of the length as he kept on pitching it fuller to the batsman at the ‘G’.

He was asked to bowl according to a specific field position which was commonly called ‘leg trap’ through which the Indian team had drawn strategies to choke runs and force the Australian batsmen in playing shots in too much eagerness after a phase of dry overs. He delivered by inducing one of the desired false shots from the big fish in the opposition camp—Marnus Labuschagne and Siraj was up and running in his Test career for which stakes were so high. He showed the level of temperament too rich for a bowler on his Test debut and persisted on with tight line around off stump, but in his mind, as always, Siraj had a bigger picture, of setting up the right-hander Cameron Green who was getting used to the balls that were leaving him from the line of the off-stump. He was eagle-eyed and when he attempted to use his change delivery, he made sure the length was full enough to get the better of the batsman. 

Those two dismissals extracted in two completely contrasting manners established the variety in Siraj the bowler and by the time Australia had finished their first innings, the nervousness and the jittery feeling of a Test debut were triumphed with performnaces. He finished with five wickets in his Test debut and played a perfect helping hand for the likes of Bumrah, Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja in helping India level the series.

Also read: Mohammed Siraj bided his time, now shows strengths on Test debut

Siraj had announced his arrival at the big stage and it augured well for India midway in the series, but the injury spree didn’t end at the MCG as well with Umesh Yadav injuring his groin so badly to never come back again in the match and the rest of the series. With his persistence, and the bad luck of others, Siraj was rising through the ranks and for the third Test at the SCG, he was the new ball bowler for India, and it showed something about both him as the bowler who had won the confidence of his captain and also about the state of the team.

The SCG pitch was staring in the face of bowlers and there was a dangerous sign for India from the opposition camp as well with the return of David Warner, although the southpaw was not 100 per cent fit. Even a 70 per cent fit Warner was good enough to thwart India’s plans with the new ball in Sydney, at least the Australian think tank thought so. Not Siraj though, as he brought another aspect of his game—having a good heart to risk getting slapped with expansive shots in search of wicket-taking deliveries around the off stump. 

Like at the MCG, Siraj was up to the task he had set for himself as Warner was lured into driving at one he could have left easily, but it wasn’t only Siraj’s excellence with the ball that was doing everything well for him. He has a perfect ingredient of being a successful bowler in the longer format, and he put all of that on display by keeping his hustle all along longer spells and not showing signs of giving up in his running as he kept on running in and toiled hard, but the docile pitch at the SCG could not help him more than offering a bit of movement with the new ball.

Siraj had already made a mark in his just two and a half match long Test career, but the grief and personal trauma were not over yet. The crowd at the SCG was not at all sympathetic to him for braving all his pain and grief to put up strong performances, let alone being impressed by his heroics. He was subjected to racial abuse from the spectators present at the ground, but it only came to the notice of fans and media when the team management in the leadership of Ajinkya Rahane approached the match officials after the end of the third day’s play. 

It showed that although those spectators who were not worthy of witnessing a fierce contest between bat and ball, and rather showing their upbringings by trying to bring a contest between race and ethnicity, tried to get under his skin, he was calm in his riposte and did not fall in the trap. The crowd behaviour in Australia can make you look like a fool and land you in trouble and even the best of crickets have fallen in that trap (Virat Kohli in 2011), but Siraj had not lost his skills of eyeing a bigger prize even one bit.

Don't miss: Teary-eyed Siraj makes remarkable transition from rookie to a lead bowler at SCG

The injury spree got only worse for the tourists as India had only Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara left from the playing XI of the first Test at the Adelaide Oval as eight of them succumbed to some sort of injuries. If the promotion to a new ball bowler was no a reflection of the team’s increasing dependence on Siraj, the promotion to the leader of the attack for the Brisbane Test was a sheer case of the god giving him the chance to lead an Indian bowling attack having been a veteran of just two Tests.

The pressure was on the hosts after failing to seal a win at the SCG and they could not have asked for a better venue than the  Gabba which has been a fortress for them in the last three decades. No wonder Tim Paine had issued a warning to Ashwin on the eagerness of the Australian team to unleash their heat on the Indian batsmen at the Gabba, and the addition of Hanuma Vihari, Jadeja, Ashwin and Bumrah to the long list of injured players were really ominous signs for the tourists.

Once again Paine won the toss and decided to bat India out of the game by piling on the big score in the first innings. Things were so desperate for India that they had to offer a Test debut to two bowlers who were not rated good enough even to be included in the squad and were overstaying with the team just to provide net practice. 

Once again Rahane needed a hero to rise through all the mounting challenges, and once again Siraj put his hands up by dismissing Warner and leading the attack to check the Australian batsmen from running away with the game.  Such was the gulf in experience between the two sides that at one stage the batting pair of Smith and Labuschagne had more wickets in tests than the combined tally of the Indian bowling attack, but that did not deter them in putting a tremendous effort and stopping the juggernaut well below the expected number at 369. 

The job was not finished though as India were still reeling behind Australia’s first innings score and at one point on the fourth day morning, the Australian pair of Labuschagne and Smith looked threatening to take the game away from the Indian team. In came Siraj and produced one of the searing unplayable deliveries of the game and Labuschnage who was batting like a dream until that point could do nothing but to edge it to Rohit Sharma in the second slip.  The right-hander was in good form and had scored a century in the first innings, but Siraj proved to be too good for him and more importantly when the team desperately needed the ‘leader’ of the attack to bring about a resurgence. Matthew Wade was outdone by luck and by that time in the series, Siraj had won more good luck than Wade, who was guilty of throwing too many starts in the series and Indian were right back in the contest. 

Smith was still there and so was the chance of India getting so far behind in the game, but Siraj‘s eyes were still focussed on the patches on the pitch that were offering a lot more assistance than other[parts of the pitch and ultimately Smith was done in by a delivery that reared off from the good length area. Smith and Labuschagne were the best batsmen for Australia in the last 18 months of cricket and the way Siraj dismissed them showed his game awareness and skills to execute the plans which must have left the three senior batsmen in the Indian camp standing in the slip cordon one after the other. 

The trio of Rahane, Rohit and Pujara has had many of those deliveries from the Australians over the last three tours they have come and have tasted success for a period of time, but not as a whole, and the feeling of watching someone from their own side talking to Australians in the same language of intensity and fire must have been surreal.

It was only fitting that Siraj was the last wicket-taker for India in the series and he finished his maiden fifer in a very short career so far, but there are enough signs that hint he is the one for the future. Before this final Test of the series, the hosts were bundled out twice in a Test at the Gabba only on two occasions in the last three decades, and leading such an inexperienced attack to that monumental height ratified the standings and respect Siraj has earned over the course of his three-match long career.

Indian batsmen brought about a memorable victory for the team that will be etched in the long-lasting history of Indian cricket on the final day, but Siraj had well completed his job by the end of the penultimate day of the series where he started as a bowler who was shielded before being launched into the roughness of the Test cricket to successfully transforming himself as a leading force behind a possible Australian capitulation at their fortress. 

Almost on all instances team members ask the bowler who gets most wickets to lead them off the park, but for Siraj, it must have been something much deeper and it was clearly evident when he and Bumrah embraced each other in a bear hug on the boundary line after bowling out Australia in their own den.

When Siraj closed his eyes while hugging Bumrah to acknowledge the moment, he must have looked back at what he has been able to achieve in such a short career, and how proud his father could have been on him had he been alive. 

It wasn’t to be, after all, he could not have brought his father back from the heaven by bowling his heart out like he could bring India back in the game on numerous occasions in the series, and hence the celebration by pointing his hands towards the sky will live on.

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