Shami, Yadav make West Indies follow-on

Sat, Jul 23, '16

Mohammed Shami bowled through the 2015 World Cup with a busted knee. By the end of it, he needed surgery, lost out on the IPL earnings and missed more than a year of international cricket. The BCCI compensated him for the loss of IPL money, a first such recorded instance. Once he was fit, Shami walked into the Test XI in Antigua, and showed why he might be a man worth looking after.

On a slow pitch where it looked difficult to dismiss batsmen who didn't play shots, Shami bowled with menace to take four wickets after which Umesh Yadav chipped in with a four-for of his own to make West Indies follow on 323 runs behind. In the follow-on, the other quick, Ishant Sharma got rid of Kraigg Brathwaite, a man known for quiet defiance who denied India for 218 balls in the first innings, in the first over.

The time away from the game was well spent from the looks of it. In his last Test series, Shami was guilty of offering leg-side runs when asked to bowl long spells. The coaches identified long strides in his run-up as the problem, a result of a huge workload in his first year with the Indian team. Shami came back with shorter strides, stayed at the batsmen for longer, provided fewer freebies, and took out the heart of the West Indies batting. A word of caution, though: West Indies, not the best going around, contributed to their dismissals.