Ishant Sharma reveals how he destroyed England in 2014 Lord's Test
Team India pacer Ishant Sharma recently talked to Shirin Sadikot of BCCI.tv about his memorable spell in the second Investec Test at Lord's in 2014. He was instrumental in India’s win as he bagged seven wickets in the second innings with an economy rate of 3.21.
Reminiscing about the Test, the 27-year-old pacer said, “In the morning the ball was reversing. Moeen Ali was beaten quite a few times but the edge didn’t come. I was very confident we would win it. But when in the first session, despite the ball reversing, you are not picking wickets, you have to try something else.” Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni had suggested the pacer to bowl bouncers for the entire last over before lunch. Sharma picked Moeen Ali’s wicket in the last ball of this over.
During lunch, Captain Cool had asked Ishant about his plans for the rest of the game. To this, Ishant had replied, “Let’s bowl full first and then if nothing happens, we will go back to bowling bouncers.” After lunch Ishant followed plan A first but Matt Prior hit him for two fours. This is when the bowler went up to his ‘Mahi bhai’ and said, “Let’s go to plan B and bowl bouncers.”
Plan B also did not succeed much as the 27-year-old was hit for boundaries for another two overs. This is when they thought of setting the field differently. Ishant said, “He hit me for boundaries for two more overs. Then we set the field with three fielders on the leg-side- a fine-leg, deep backward square-leg and deep midwicket. The ball had become so old that even if the batsman hit it, it would have gone to the man at midwicket. It worked for us.”
Talking about this spell of Ishant, Dhoni had told The Guardian in 2014, “To start with it was very difficult to convince him to bowl short or around the wicket. You have to tell him that it still counts as a Test wicket when you are bowling short, not only when you get a nick to the keeper.”
MSD had set up such a field that compelled Ishant to bowl the way his skipper wanted. In Mahi’s own words, “So I set a field to him so he couldn’t even think of pitching it up; that was the start. I gave him the field that forced him to bowl the way I wanted him to bowl.”
Though India had won this Test match, they were defeated in the remaining three games and thus lost the series.