Senior pacer Mohammed Shami bowled hard in the nets before the practise match against hosts Australia on Monday, having just returned to the star-studded Team India squad under Rohit Sharma. Jasprit Bumrah has been replaced in India’s World Cup squad by pace spearhead Shami.
On Monday, October 17, during the final over of India vs. Australia’s T20 World Cup’s warm-up match, Mohammed Shami made a sensational comeback to the Indian team. Rohit Sharma surprised everyone by bringing in Shami in the game’s final over, especially considering how poorly the Indian team has been closing out games lately. Three of Australia’s four players were taken out of the game by Shami in his very first over. (20th over).
Pat Cummins, Josh Inglis, and Kane Richardson were all bowled by Shami, and Ashton Agar was run out by the bowler and Dinesh Karthik. This was always the plan, according to Rohit, who said that they wanted to give Shami the final over of the match to put him to the test in those particular circumstances.
“I thought we batted well, towards the end we could have added 10-15 runs more. We always want a set batter to stay till the end, SKY did it, overall a great batting effort with nice bounce, was a pitch where you can trust your shots. You got to be smart with batting on grounds like these. You can’t forget to push the balls into the gaps, scoring 8-9 runs in an over can be quite an effective plan. It was a great practice game for us. There is room for improvement, but I want more consistency from the bowlers. You need to keep things simple and hit the deck hard. Overall a good game for us, they had a decent partnership and that put us under pressure. He (Shami) is coming back after a long time, so we wanted to give him an over. Wanted to give him a challenge and let him bowl the final over, and you saw what he did,” said skipper Rohit Sharma.