It is hard to believe that Ishant Sharma has played 92 Tests at the age of 31 years, but he has only 278 wickets to show for it and the majority of them have come in his latest avatar. An average of 33.41 might not seem too good for someone with so many matches under their belts, but Ishant has been the leader of the pace attack since Zaheer Khan’s retirement.
He had a stint with Sussex in the England county championship and this proved to be a turning point in his career. Sussex’s head coach Jason Gillespie is a celebrated Australia fast bowler and he recalls how Ishant transformed into a brilliant bowler who bowled fuller and got wickets with movement.
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"He would look at county batsmen he may have never seen before and seen how they grip the bat - which would give him an indication of if he is a top hand player or a bottom hand player. He would study how their backlift goes - which gives you an idea of the sort of shots they are looking to play and open the possible opportunities of taking wickets,” says Gillespie.
Between 2007 and 2014, Ishant Sharma took 187 Test wickets at an average of 37.30 from 61 Test matches. "The first big thing that stood out for me when he arrived... even though he has played a lot of international cricket, he's played all around the world, he had this real desire to improve and learn. Ishant's biggest asset is his openness to have conversations about how to be better. Because you can get players who have played a lot of cricket and they feel they know it all, but Ishant was opposite," Gillespie remembers.
Gillespie nudged Ishant towards the benefits of bowling fuller and aiming for the batsman’s pads instead of the top of the off-stump. Ishant knew very well that he was now a one-format bowler with even IPL ditching him and he has embraced that status with love and is getting better and better in one thing he does the best.
"We adjusted his grip, the position of the ball in his hand and his release positions at the point of delivery, where his wrist and fingers were. He tried a couple of different things until we found that if he held the ball a certain way, it went straight on - it was just his wrist position at ball release. His fingers were pointing towards fine leg and his wrist was shaping towards fine leg as well. We adjusted that to get that going down the pitch as opposed to fine leg,” Gillespie mentions.
"We got him to stay nice and tall at the crease and following through straight down the pitch and not going off the pitch too early in his follow through and that allowed everything to flow towards the batsman. That's where I think he made his biggest improvement and that was all on Ishant - it was a lot of hard work, he spent hours and hours in the nets just perfecting that one delivery," Gillespie adds.
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This has helped Ishant immensely given that since the start of 2018, he has 52 wickets at an average of 19.78 and takes a wicket every 44.3 deliveries. Ishant now has an alternative leg trap on flatter Indian wickets, a course-corrected strategy Gillespie & Co. used to great effect during the series win of 2004. Ishant now has also added a surprise bouncer to his arsenal.
"The key to bowling in India is getting your legside field right, a lot of players in the subcontinent feel they can score freely through the leg side if bowlers bowl at the stump. It's what we discussed, something that Ishant does very well. He looks to attack that middle and off-stump at all time, because of his natural angle in. If you get the field right - he'll have a catching mid-wicket, a square leg pushed back to the fence as well as a fine-leg. He will attack the stumps and that gives him a bouncer option as well. He will be just fine in India," says Gillespie.
(Cricbuzz inputs)
