Lion-Hearted Siraj Runs Through England In Unrelenting Spell Post Lunch

We’re in the fifth Test of a grueling series that’s seen bodies fall, and everything that needs to be said and written about Mohammed Siraj’s endurance has already been said and written. 

Even then, you could not help but admire his unbelievable lion-heartedness as he not only gave it everything post lunch on day two at The Oval, but bowled a searing, never-ending spell where he willed the English middle-order into submission by relentlessly coming at them. 

This is a series where bodies have broken and fallen, and as of day two of the fifth Test, Siraj is the last man standing. Chris Woakes was the only other pacer to have played all five Tests but he endured an unfortunate shoulder dislocation on day one, leaving Siraj standing on his own. 

Considering this, it’s utterly bonkers he did what he did post lunch on day two, operating like a relentless machine. 

After getting taken apart by Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett with the new ball, it was in the 25th over of the England innings that Shubman Gill threw the ball to Siraj, with the hosts’ score reading 142/2.

What followed was an uninterrupted, marathon 8-over spell from Siraj where he floored the English middle-order by removing all of Ollie Pope, Joe Root and Jacob Bethell.  

Siraj had instant success after being reintroduced into the attack, dismissing Pope on the very fourth ball of his spell. 

By now, the nip-backer off a short-ish good length has become Siraj’s trademark in Tests, and he got the better of Pope with this exact delivery. A combination of exaggerated seam movement and the ball keeping low caught the batter dead in front.  

It wasn’t until the fifth over of his new spell that Siraj would strike again, but that was a direct byproduct of him asking all sorts of questions to the big fish, Root. In the very same over he got Root, Siraj had conceded two boundaries off the first two balls, both outside edges that went along the ground through the slip cordon. 

It could easily have been a trigger for the right-armer to get frustrated and lose the plot, but instead Siraj kept hitting the channel. And he got his reward on the final ball of the over, once again a trademark nip-backer that pinned the batter in front. Root was deep in his crease and, on this occasion, there was no escape. 

Yet one would think that the dismissal that would have given Siraj the most satisfaction would be that of Jacob Bethell. 

It’s no secret that, over the past few years, Siraj has sort of ‘lost’ his natural outswinger to the right-hander (inswinger to the left-hander). He’s upskilled by mastering the wobble ball but the conventional swinger is something that’s gone out of his armoury. 

But that returned in the dismissal of Bethell, even if it was briefly, as he pinged the left-hander with a snorter of an inswinging yorker to which the youngster had no answer. Bethell was expecting a length ball and was preparing for that, but he was taken so aback by the inswinging yorker that he was nowhere near bringing his bat down in time. 

Bethell’s wicket came in the seventh over of Siraj’s spell. He bowled one more in the same spell, and three more post Tea. 

Such was his tenacity that it compensated for India having not picked a fourth seamer. Just Mohammed Siraj things.