Ishant Sharma – Perhaps the most overrated Indian pacer today

Almost 6 years ago, Ishant burst onto the international scene by scaring the daylight out of Australian batsmen such as Ricky Ponting in Australia. Steve Waugh called him the future of Indian cricket after that controversial tour. A lot was expected from the lanky, long haired pacer from Delhi and that was proved as he was picked for almost a million dollars by SRK’s Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL 2008! He capped off his first year of international cricket with a man of the series award for spearheading India’s Test series win against Australia at home.

But he over bowled, ever since. His natural ability to bowl swing at 150 km/hr disappeared, making him way too predictable especially in Indian conditions which tend to favour spinners more. He is another sob story of a potential Indian fast bowler losing his way. This is where the likes of Zaheer, Kapil Dev and Javagal Srinath deserve immense respect.

Injuries came one after another, and that shattered his confidence further. That has made him only play 51 Tests and 68 ODIs for India so far. 144 wickets in Tests at an average of 37.99 simply does not do justice to the team. MS Dhoni and selectors need to take a closer look at his career. However, his ODI figures are more startling and the match against Australia yesterday highlighted this point further.

96 wickets at an economy rate of 5.70 is unimpressive, even in an era of T20 cricket letting batsmen dominate all formats of the game. He has a knack of picking up wicket taking deliveries in patches, but is not helped by being consistently inaccurate unless the pitch offers him a considerable amount of bounce and swing. T20s can help a bowler regain his ODI form to a huge extent, but Ishant has not been able to cash on his form while playing for Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL.

He seems to have forgotten what he learnt from Dale Steyn and Waqar Younis. But his role seems to be different in Tests and ODIs, which is rare for any bowler in world cricket. Ironically, Dhoni thinks he can contain runs better rather than taking wickets in Tests but in ODIs, he is expected to bowl death overs, that too after being introduced as a first change bowler!

India now have a huge bench strength of young or enthusiastic pacers such as Jaydev Unadkat, Praveen Kumar, Umesh Yadav, Dhawal Kulkarni, Mohit Sharma and Irfan Pathan, all of whom are capable of playing at international level. If Ishant does not step up in the next 4 ODIs, it could be curtains to his ODI and T20 careers if not his Test career.