The Resurgence of Ishant Sharma

At the age of 25, Ishant Sharma has seen a lot of the negatives associated with being an Indian Test cricketer, lambasted by critics and fans alike for everything from his performances to his hairstyle.

Ishant’s international cricket career started off promisingly, the beanpole 19-year-old taking five wickets against Pakistan on a featherbed in Bangalore.

The performance was good enough for him to be sent to Australia, where he served up one of the most memorable fast bowling spells to one of the greatest batsmen of the era.

That hour of tormenting and torturing Ricky Ponting at the WACA went down in folklore, and Indians believed they finally had a fast bowler who would help them win overseas.

Not a lot went right for Ishant after that tour. He lost his pace, lost his control, and struggled to find the right length to trouble batsmen at home or abroad with his steeping height. Indian selectors persisted with Ishant time and time again, to the point where he had the unwanted record of having the worst bowling average for any bowler with 50 Test caps or more.

It was hard to see why selectors continued with him, but paradoxically, it was hard to see how he could be ignored. With his steeping height, and India’s lack of pace bowling options, his spot was almost guaranteed, never mind results.

However, with the emergence of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohammad Shami in the last couple of years, it seemed that Ishant would be cast into obscurity like many an Indian fast bowler before him.

Ishant’s career was given an extended rope due to the tough nature of India’s tours in 2013 through to 2015. With away series in South Africa, New Zealand, now England and then into Australia later on this year, and the lack of form or fitness of Zaheer Khan, experience was needed.

Ishant gave Indian fans doses of the best and worst of what he has to offer in the same Test in Wellington. Taking 6/51 in New Zealand’s first innings, it was thought he was about to live up to his potential. Disappointment followed with a return of 0/164 in the second innings.

Fast forward to the second Test against England at Lord’s, India in a similar position to Johannesburg in December 2013, and Wellington in February 2014. Six wickets to take their first victory outside Asia in more than three years, with two established batsmen at the crease not budging, the game was slowing moving out of India’s grasp.

MS Dhoni then threw the ball to his lanky speedster, with a plan to pepper the English batsmen with short bowling. Ishant, full of self-doubt, did not agree with his captain. Dhoni, faced with as much pressure about his overseas Test captaincy as Ishant about his bowling, scolded his young bowler to follow orders.

What followed was an un-Dhoni-like – un-Indian-like, for that matter – ploy to buy wickets with short pitched bowling.

Ishant’s spell, accentuated by the inept nature of England’s middle and lower order batting, was one of the greatest witnessed by an Indian seamer since that spell in 2008.

Pushing his body to its limits, until his team was comfortably on the board with the victory, as well as his own name on the Lord’s honours board, it seemed Ishant had turned a new leaf in his career.

Ishant is a young man, and with 57 Tests under his belt, his record may not be the greatest. It needs to be remembered that many fast bowlers do not even debut at Ishant’s current age, and he was robbed of the development phase of his early career being slingshot straight into Test level.

Now with a captain who believes in himself, and in Ishant, he may just turn out to be the fast bowler India have been looking for all these years.