ENG v IND 2018: Jason Gillespie’s advice a major factor behind Ishant Sharma’s improved performance

Ishant picked up a five-wicket haul in the second innings of Edgbaston Test.

Ishant Sharma | Getty

India speedster Ishant Sharma had a remarkable two-month county stint with Sussex this season under the guidance of former Australia pacer Jason Gillespie. The lanky pacer was in full throttle with the ball in first-class matches as well as the List A games. While Ishant claimed 15 wickets in 4 first-class affairs, he scalped 8 wickets from 6 List A matches.

Fresh from his county success, Ishant carried on the good work against the Test debutants Afghanistan in June and now he is showing his worth in the ongoing Edgbaston Test against England. Sharma picked up a five-wicket haul in the second innings to restrict England to 180 all-out. He dented England’s middle order by claiming the wickets of Dawid Malan, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler.

“It was clear from the time he landed down and headed soon to a training nets that Ishant meant business. I remember he played a warm-up game early on; it was probably 5 degrees or something. Cold. But he put in a lot of overs. Same thing in the nets, he trained for hours with Jason,” Sussex skipper Ben Brown told The Indian Express.

“I remember Jason telling him that he should probably forget the top of the offstump stuff; instead focus on the knee-roll. If he had to hit knee high, then he had to get the ball fuller. That was the rationale. If he had to hit knee high, then he had to get the ball fuller. That was the rationale,” he added.

Recently, Gillespie had revealed that he has worked on his wrist position and bowling fuller lengths during his time in county cricket. 

"We spoke a lot about a fuller length attacking off stump - batsman’s knee-roll height. He also worked hard on the position of his wrist at the point of release. His natural delivery comes back into the right-hander. He worked on the ball that held its line and got batsmen playing at the ball thinking it was going to come back and hit the stump," Gillespie had told Sportskeeda.

 
 

By Salman Anjum - 04 Aug, 2018

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