Mohammed Shami Flips Spin Script In Dubai To Outfox Australia

At the end of the first semi-final, as India completed a nervy four-wicket win over Australia, Harsha Bhogle on air said that it was a ‘very easy choice’ to pick the Player of the Match.

Virat Kohli it was, and it’s hard to argue that he didn’t deserve it, with the right-hander scripting yet another chasing masterclass - against his favourite opponents, no less - to power India to their straight final in an ICC white-ball event. 

Yet if there was one individual who equally deserved to win the award, it was none other than Mohammed Shami, who played as big a hand in setting up India’s win today as Kohli.

Ahead of the semi-final, all the talk was about the ‘slow’ nature of the surface and how spinners would wreak havoc. 

The surface was so dry that both sides played as many as four spinners. Australia axed their 140 kph seamer to include a leggie - how often have we seen that happen? Essentially, both teams wrote off seamers and expected pace to largely be a non-factor. 

And yet it was Shami who was arguably the pick of the bowlers among both sides, finishing with 3/48 off his 10 overs, while picking *the* decisive wicket in the contest - that of Steve Smith.

Shami is one of those bowlers who thrives on rhythm, and, usually, you can tell within a few deliveries whether he is in the zone or not. 

On the day, within a couple of overs, you just knew that he was feeling it.

There was swing and seam up-front for the quicks in Dubai today, and Shami began the game with a vicious outswinger that was a wide. He then came agonizingly close to sending Travis Head back for a golden duck, with the speedster squandering a tough-ish return catch after a nicely angled delivery induced a leading edge.

Shami did not make ‘amends’ for the Head drop per se, but put on a new-ball exhibition against young Cooper Connolly, humiliating the newbie half-a-dozen times IN A ROW in the same manner, beating his outside edge, before removing the left-hander by, well, bowling the exact same delivery for a seventh time. 

The right-armer got picked off by Head in his third over, with him conceding a hat-trick of boundaries, still he bowled a new ball spell that was far better than what the numbers suggested (3-0-17-1). 

Yet it’s what Shami would do in the 11-40 phase that would end up turning the entire complexion of the match.

Rohit Sharma brought Shami back for a one-over spell in the 22nd over, with Australia cruising at 105/2, and the pacer immediately started making things happen. 

With Smith on 36*, Shami bowled a sequence of deliveries that went beaten, dropped (return chance), beaten and dot. 

No wicket unfortunately, but it’s a passage of play that would end up proving crucial. For, it ended up being a trailer for what was about to come roughly 12 overs later.

Rohit withdrew Shami from the attack - rather bizarrely - after this one-over spell, and it was only in the 35th over that the speedster returned for his third spell.

By the end of his third spell, though, India were in total control of the contest, and had fully wrestled back the advantage.

At 182/4 in 34 overs, Carey and Smith were in total control, and the momentum was completely with Australia at this point.  The previous three overs, in fact, had gone for 22 runs despite them being bowled by Kuldeep Yadav and Varun Chakaravarthy.

Enter Shami.

13 overs later, Shami resumed his battle with Smith once again, and, ONCE MORE, induced an uncharacteristic false shot from the Aussie skipper, who danced down the wicket trying to whack the seamer down the ground. It was almost as if Smith had decided well beforehand that Shami had to go.

Smith survived again, but Shami brought some tension back, and, crucially, stopped the easy flow of runs, conceding just 4 runs.

As fate would have it, after a bunch of luckless deliveries, Shami would end up having his deserved stroke of luck in his next over.

Carey took a single off the second ball of the 37th over, and that once again kick-started the Shami-Smith battle. Smith got a couple on the third ball of the over via a mistimed pull, but his luck would finally run out on the fourth ball.

Shami bowled a rank full toss, arguably his worst delivery of the tournament, and Smith had run down the wicket in an attempt to thwart it down the ground. Yet somehow, the Australia skipper ended up completely missing the ball, and so ended up getting his stumps shattered. 

The brainfade from Smith - or, the deserved stroke of luck for Shami - helped India break the nagging 54-run stand between the Aussie skipper and Carey. 

And that ultimately ended up proving to be the turning point of the first innings, and the match.

From 198/4 in 36.3 overs, with two set batters in the middle, looking set for 300, Australia ended up getting just 264. Smith’s dismissal brought in Glenn Maxwell, and the big hitting right-hander was sent packing for 7 by Axar Patel. 

198/4 became 205/6 in the blink of an eye, and, from that point, India were always ahead of the game. They never fell behind, and eventually ended up getting home, though it turned out to be nervier than they would have liked. 

***

For a while now, all the talk regarding Shami has been how he’s lacked sharpness and how he does not look fully fit, yet. The truth is, he is still not close to the level he showed in the 2023 ODI World Cup, where he was pretty much unplayable. 

Yet the best of the athletes find a way to overpower their opponents merely through their skill even at times they’re not at their very best, and that is precisely what Shami did today in Dubai.

He was the sole specialist seamer in the side, and his job got complicated when he got no support from Hardik Pandya, who went for 40 off the 5.3 overs he bowled. Above all, this wasn’t even a surface for the seamers, with both captains putting faith on their spinners. 

For Shami, however, none of this mattered. He came, he saw, and he conquered.