AFP PHOTO / NOAH SEELAM / GETTYOUT You call it a fairytale rise up the Indian ranks claiming it to be a classic rags-to-riches story, or praise his bowling prowess as he honed it little by little, but Mohammed Siraj‘s run from an absolute nobody to a call-up for the T20I series against New Zealand has created quite a stir in Indian cricketing fraternity.
Until few months back, Mohammed Siraj wasn’t a quite a familiar name, even in the cricketing circle. Siraj made his first-class debut in 2015 and had quite a few good spells to his name but even then, that wasn’t enough to grab the selectors’ attention. After grinding through the domestic circuit for quite some time, that eventually came during the 2017 Indian Premier League. And yesterday, the BCCI announced the 16-member squad for the three-match T20I series against New Zealand side. Much to everyone’s surprise, two uncapped players, Siraj and Mumbai’s Shreyas Iyer, were named in the squad.
Siraj’s is a typical rags-to-riches story. Born to an auto-rickshaw driver in Hyderabad, Siraj was brought by for a mammoth of Rs 2.6 crore by IPL franchise Sunrisers Hyderabad despite having a base price of just Rs 20 lakh. And as luck would have it, an injury to Ashish Nehra meant there was that glimmer of hope that every youngster craves for. He didn’t disappoint and ended the season with 10 wickets from the six matches in which he featured, including a four-for in the last league match against Gujarat Lions in Kanpur that helped his side qualify for the play-offs. But that is not where it had all started.
Siraj, at the age of seven, fell in love with the game and back then, it was mere bunking classes to play tennis-ball cricket. Later in 2015, he picked up the red ball and bagged quite a few five-wicket hauls. He then got a call for Hyderabad’s U-23 side and then the senior team and finally in Ranji. In the 2016-17 season, the pacer scalped 41 wickets at an average of 18.92 as he became the third-highest wicket-taker in the campaign after Shahbaz Nadeem and Anupam Sanklecha. And what followed next was a maiden IPL season.
Siraj then received a call of India A series against South Africa where he took 10 wickets. Of late, he played against New Zealand A where he picked up four wickets in three matches. Overall, he has played 16 T20 matches, picking up 26 wickets at an average of 18.73.
The Hyderabad pacer will hope to kick-start his international career when Virat Kohli-led Team India face off against Kane Williamson-led New Zealand in the first of the three T20s on November one at Feroz Shah Kotla, Delhi, which is also pacer Ashish Nehra’s farewell match.
