There is a popular cricketing adage that goes, ‘catches win matches’. Mohammad Siraj, like many of us, believed in this too, which is why he thought the game was over when he lost the chance to get rid of Harry Brook by stepping on the boundary cushion on the fourth day of the final Test. Brook, who went on to score a quick century, ensured that thought weighed down on Siraj as he went back at the close of play. However, the Indian pacer revealed he woke up the next day believing that he could turn the game around.
“I cannot describe my feelings,” Siraj said after being awarded the Player of the Match award. “After yesterday’s incident, I thought the match was gone. Had we got Harry Brook out before lunch, things would have been different. There would have been no fifth day. That was a game-changing moment. But we came back strongly after that.
“When I woke up this morning, I told myself I would change the game. I opened Google, downloaded a ‘believe’ image, and put that as my phone wallpaper.”
On the fifth day, India were four wickets away from the win, but England, who just needed 35 runs, seemed ahead in the contention. That was before Mohammad Siraj ran through the remaining English lineup, taking all but one of the remaining four batters. He sent Jamie Smith packing in the second over of the day, and followed it up by thumping Jamie Overton’s pads in the next. These two back-to-back wickets truly changed the dynamic of the game in India’s favour. It wasn’t long before Gus Atkinson, who was trying to do the majority of the work with an injured Chris Woakes standing at the non-striker’s end, had his off stump uprooted by none other than Siraj.
“My only plan was to bowl consistently at one spot and to move the ball in and out from there,” Siraj said. “I didn’t want to try too much because that could have released the pressure. From day one to today, every Test went to the fifth day. So hats off to everyone in the squad for the way they fought.”
Siraj wrapped the series up as the leading wicket-taker, with 23 wickets, and was the only bowler, besides Woakes, to play all five games of the series. But it wasn’t the first time in the series that he was playing under the pump. In the third Test, when India needed 23 to win with the last wicket, he and Ravindra Jadeja tried to keep the visitors’ hopes alive for longer than anyone expected them to. As luck would have it, Siraj departed in the most unfortunate way possible when a Shoaib Bashir ball rolled off the ground after he had defended it and hit the stumps to dislodge the bail.
“It was a heartbreaking moment,” Siraj said, recalling his dismissal at Lord’s. “Jaddu [Ravindra Jadeja] bhai was telling me not to overthink and focus on middling every ball. He told me to think about my father and how hard I have worked to get here. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.”
