Mohammed Shami : There is a different joy in bowling reverse swing

Stuttering at 56/4 while chasing a target of 434, New Zealand's Luke Ronchi and Mitch Santner decided to script a fightback on the final day of the Kanpur Test with a 102-run partnership. After Ronchi departed, BJ Watling and Santner once again looked to build a huge partnership. Both Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin were unable to break the duo's resilience that is when skipper Virat Kohli handed the ball to Mohammed Shami, and the pacer duly obliged by removing Watling and Mark Craig in consecutive balls which proved crucial in India wrapping up things quickly.

Speaking about reversing the ball late in the match, Shami told BCCI,

"There is a different joy in bowling reverse swing. The old ball is one of my main weapons and I am comfortable bowling with the old ball. I know if I can get a hint of reverse swing, I can use it to good effect. The moment I start getting the ball to reverse, I get back to one of my bowling strong points.

"I love bowling reverse swing. When the ball is reversing I try to get the batsman out bowled or get him LBW. These two are the mode of dismissals that you get with reverse swing. When I get a feel that it is going to help reverse swing I look to hit the top of off-stump maximum number of times or else I aim at the batsman's pad. Both these factors happened today against Watling and Craig."

Jadeja and Ashwin were the bowling in tandem for most of the day, as Shami was only brought into the attack after 29 overs have being bowled in the day. Shami said that there was a good enough reason for it.

"The ball wasn't reversing early on in the innings and we were waiting for the moment when we could reverse the ball," Shami said. "Then Kohli gave me the ball and I bowled a couple of deliveries and expected to get some reverse swing. We were waiting for the moment for three days and it reversed in the fifth day. The moment we could get a bit of reverse swing, we decided to execute it.

Shami also explained that it takes the effort from the entire team to get the ball ready to reverse.

"There is a lot of work behind getting the ball to reverse swing. It is like team effort, every member of the team makes it a point to keep the ball dry at all times and maintain it throughout the day. There are times when you will get reverse swing but if it gets wet, you won't be able to execute swing perfectly because the ball will tend to get heavy," he said.