New Delhi: Mohammed Shami’s international career may have neared its end. The national selection committee on Wednesday decided to ignore him for the two-match Test series against South Africa starting in Kolkata on Nov 14. Shami’s name was the only notable one missing from the team picked by the selectors on Wednesday. Rishabh Pant, expectedly, got his place back as the vice-captain of the team after playing for India ‘A’ last week post recovering from a foot injury that he had sustained during the Manchester Test in July. Shami missing out on this Test series is an indication that the selection committee and the team management have decided to move on from him and are now focusing on forming a stable pace-bowling attack. Akash Deep, who was nursing a back injury after the England tour in Aug, has made a comeback into the Test team in place of Prasidh Krishna, with Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj leading the attack.
Even if Shami was picked for this series, he was unlikely to start in the playing XI, with Bumrah and Siraj clearly ahead of him and the team management seeking more assistance for the spinners. It will be interesting to see how the local curator, known for not taking instructions from home teams in domestic cricket and IPL, can change the nature of the square at Eden Gardens in such a short period of time. Akash Deep has a lot of experience in bowling at Eden Gardens, should the conditions compel India to go in with a proper third seam-bowling option. However, the chances of that happening are negligible. India’s next Test assignment is in Sri Lanka in July-Aug next year before a tour of New Zealand in late 2026. Shami will be past 36 when the New Zealand tour comes around. Shami’s omission from the Indian team has been a talking point since he was laid low by a chronic injury last year, just when he had recovered from his Achilles tendon injury, which kept him out of cricket since the ODI World Cup final in Nov 2023. Shami did make a comeback in the white-ball format in late Jan and was played in India’s victorious Champions Trophy campaign in Dubai in March. However, Sunrisers Hyderabad benched him in the second half of the IPL, citing his lack of form. Subsequently, the national selection committee led by Ajit Agarkar ignored him for the five-Test series in England. Sources told TOI that the selectors feared Shami breaking down in the middle of a match, given that his fitness was still dodgy. It also emerged that Shami was struggling to find his rhythm in IPL and get the ball through to the wicketkeeper. It will be interesting to see where Shami’s career is headed in white-ball formats, where India seem to have a settled attack.Test squad: Shubman Gill (C), Rishabh Pant (WK & VC), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Devdutt Padikkal, Dhruv Jurel (WK), Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar, Jasprit Bumrah, Axar Patel, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Mohammed Siraj, Kuldeep Yadav, Akash DeepIndia ‘A’ one-day squad against SA ‘A’: Tilak Varma (C), Ruturaj Gaikwad (VC), Abhishek Sharma, Riyan Parag, Ishan Kishan (WK), Ayush Badoni, Nishant Sindhu, Vipraj Nigam, Manav Suthar, Harshit Rana, Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna, Khaleel Ahmed, Prabhsimran Singh (WK).
