Ravi Shastri in IPL 2022 – SRH – Sunrisers Hyderabad

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Umran Malik should be given a central contract from the BCCI “immediately”, in the opinion of Ravi Shastri, who also believes Malik will be “a handful” in first-class cricket and has the potential to even be part of the Indian Test at provided he is put on the development path by the Indian cricket authorities.
Malik, who recently clocked 156.9 kph, possibly the fastest ball in IPL history, is also the fourth highest wicket taker this IPL with 21 wickets in 13 matches averaging 20 and saving 8.93 . Malik is playing his first full IPL season and already has a five-for- [the second-best figures so far this season]but it’s his raw, uninhibited pace that’s got batters into trouble, fans to the edge of their seats, and pundits like Shastri excited.
“Central contract straight away,” Shastri said on ESPNcricinfo’s T20 Time Out after Malik put in another impressive performance with a three-wicket haul in Sunrisers Hyderabad’s win against Mumbai Indians on Tuesday. “And keep him in the mix, don’t let him float around. Keep him in the mix with the main players and then he learns to see (and) be around with the [Mohammed] Shamis and the [Jasprit] Bumrahs, and see the way they train, see the way they manage their workload.

“Of course there’s the team management, the support staff, who will help him with that, but don’t let him stray at this point. Get him in the mix, and keep him there and trim him.”

While Malik has rattled the top hitters in the IPL – on Tuesday Malik Rohit hit Sharma in the helmet – with his extreme pace and uprooted stumps, someone like Shami has urged him to focus on combining “pace with accuracy”.

“He will get better and better,” Shastri said. “You see his bowling as soon as he takes a wicket. Look at the lines he starts bowling as opposed to when he doesn’t have a wicket – that’s when he tries everything, his lines are all over the place. You don’t want him to do it The last thing you would say to him when he’s looking for control is to slow down the pace What you want him to do is get his lines right: if he can bowl that stump line then attack the stumps constantly , if he varies his height, he will have problems [batters]†

“If he gets a wicket and a new guy comes in, he can really rattle him because he’s got the pace, he can keep the guy sharp, but it’s that line – if he gets in that channel, without slowing down his pace , it will make a huge difference.”

And if Malik could stick to that plan, Shastri said he wouldn’t be surprised if Malik is soon part of the Indian test squad. “I promise you, this guy is going to be a handful in red-ball cricket. Handful, really. If he’s part of an Indian tempo battery that has (already) Bumrah, Shami, add this guy in (as) a fourth man, it’s going to be a serious attack.”

Shastri’s views are similar to those of Sunrisers’ head coach Tom Moody, who had said Malik was like a “Ferrari” and there was no point in asking him to slow his pace and focus on line and length.
At 22, Malik is enjoying the best time of his life doing something that comes naturally to him: bowling fast. But you feel that he also hears what the experts say. After Tuesday’s win, Malik was eager to understand how his senior Sunrisers teammate Bhuvneshwar Kumar had thrown a girl in the penultimate over of Mumbai’s chase.

Bhuvneshwar pointed out that he had figured out that delivering yorkers was the “best option” based on the behavior of the pitch, and he managed to pull it off. Malik then wanted to know the key to successful bowling in death overs, the most difficult stage in T20 cricket. “The most necessary thing in death bowling is to keep yourself calm because what often happens is the pressure comes as soon as a limit is reached,” Bhuvneshwar told Malik in a chat on iplt20.com† “So all I want to say is how much you can keep calm and have a calm mind then it will help you.”

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