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Follow UsHow do you judge Shams Mulani?
Is it through his sheer perseverance with the ball, often negating the impact of the pitch and still having a crack in the game? Or is it through his dogged determination to bat through, even when the top-order fails to do their job properly?
No matter from which side of the lens you look, you’d admit that Shams Mulani makes things happen. He is Mumbai Cricket’s classic old dog - always up for a fight but never at the cost of putting his team in danger.
On a Wankhede wicket with variable bounce and enough turn to keep the batters guessing, Dhawal Kulkarni had provided a solid base on Day 1 of the Ranji Trophy final itself, but the real carnage came on Day 2. And guess what? Shams Mulani powered that phase by sending Aditya Thakare, Akshay Wadkar, and Harsh Dubey back into the hut. That broke Vidarbha’s back and ended their hope of overpowering Mumbai’s first-innings total of 224 runs.
Throughout the season, Vidarbha have created a reputation for turning things around. When pushed to a corner, they have always roared back. And Mumbai, on the back of a batting line-up made up of straw and tissue paper, needed to change this dynamic. At the start of Day 2, Kulkarni and Shardul Thakur were bowling in the right channels to trouble Vidarbha batters, but were not incisive enough.
With Aditya Thakare and Yash Rathod out there, a strong partnership could have cornered Mumbai. But that’s when Mulani came into the picture. He has always come into the picture when his side has needed him. And in the blink of an eye, he grabbed three important wickets to decisively turn the game in the home side’s favour.
It hasn’t always been like that for the left-arm spinner. In the first three years of his first-class career, Mulani seemed like an average bowler - lucky to have been given an extended run. That phase - from 2018 to 2021 - yielded him just 28 wickets in 10 games at an average of 34.46.
He always had the talent and something had to give. And it did in the 2021-22 Ranji Trophy where he ended up as the season's leading wicket-taker, with nine five-wicket hauls and five ten-wicket hauls in just six games. He hasn’t looked back since then. In the last four seasons, Mulani has 144 wickets at an average of 20.5 - which is by a distance the highest for any bowler in Indian domestic cricket. Quite incredible indeed.
“When it came to the Ranji Trophy, I told myself that you have got the skillset; you just have to take your game to the next level and mentally always be there. You have to dream of picking up plenty of wickets, then only you will take wickets. I just try to focus on the game and improve my skillset, even if I’m practising, I constantly work on my game,” Mulani had said in an interview with Cricket.com last year.
“I got that confidence, there was a time when people thought that if Mumbai are bowling, then Shams is going to take a fifer. In Mumbai, you have got always to perform, and there’s always pressure,” Mulani beamed a smile while talking about his game.
In addition to 34 wickets at an average of 23.14 in the ongoing season, Mulani has also amassed 303 runs, but more importantly, has played out 705 balls. In a season where Mumbai batters didn’t really live up to the standards, the likes of Mulani, Tanush Kotian, Thakur and Tushar Deshpande have sizzled to salvage their reputation a fair bit. And once again, Mulani has been at the centre of it.
If Mumbai go on to win the final - they are very well poised to do it - this will be the culmination of a wonderful chapter in Mulani’s career. Mumbai don’t always wait nine long years to win a Ranji Trophy and certainly no Mumbaikar waits that long to lift the coveted trophy after putting in such numbers. This will only go on to propel his career forward towards the ultimate dream.
