New Delhi, Jan 8: Ishant Sharma’s immense experience might gain precedence over Umesh Yadav’s classical outswingers when Indian team management zeroes in on an injured Mohammed Siraj’s replacement for the series-deciding final Test against South Africa.
Siraj, who sustained a hamstring strain while bowling on the first evening of the second Test, managed only 15.5 overs in the two innings and coach Rahul Dravid admitted that his injury did affect the team strategy while defending 240 in the fourth innings.
Dravid had said that it is difficult to commit whether Siraj will get fit in next few days as hamstring injuries don’t heal that easily. They require extensive rest and rehabilitation, more so for fast bowlers, who have way more workload than batters.
In this backdrop, India have two options for the Newlands Test starting January 11. One is 33-year-old Ishant, who hasn’t been in the best of forms but has experience of more than 100 Tests and is a workhorse. The other is 34-year old Umesh, who has 51 Tests under his belt and in the recent past has been a better performer than Ishant, who seemed to have also lost out on a bit of pace.
However both Dravid and skipper Virat Kohli may prefer the lanky Delhi speedster for multiple reasons. One of the biggest reasons could be his near 6 feet 3 and half inch height, which might help in creating those awkward lengths for the Proteas batters, something that the home team pacers Marco Jansen and Duanne Olivier have enjoyed.
“It just felt like the ball seemed to misbehave a little bit more for them, and that could be [because of the] fact of the height. On up-and-down wickets sometimes just having that extra height might tend to make a little bit of a difference, so it just felt for us [that] the balls didn’t misbehave as much,” Dravid had said.
Even former chairman of selectors MSK Prasad agreed that Ishant should be the choice.
“We missed a tall fast bowler in Johannesburg and the only one we have is Ishant. On these kind of tracks, he is my choice ahead of Umesh. Had it been an Indian track which is rugged and feels like dustbowl, Umesh would be my ‘go to’ man.”
The ideal length on South African tracks is somewhere in between back of the length (short) and good length (6 metre). Former India keeper Deep Dasgupta feels that despite Ishant going off the boil in past few games, he still should be preferred at Newlands. “I won’t be able to say whether Kohli has the same faith in Ishant’s abilities which he had till 2019. But even then in this game, Ishant, if played, could come in handy compared to Umesh.” (PTI)
