Mohammed Shami has no BCCI contract, but a champion's ego

Despite being far away from the hustle and bustle of the ongoing T20 World Cup in Kolkata, Mohammed Shami still ensured that he became the talking point of India's cricketing fraternity one more time on Tuesday. The senior pro’s career-best figures of 22.1-3-90-8 for Bengal against Jammu & Kashmir in a Ranji Trophy semi-final was simply sensational — even by his lofty standards — though it’s unlikely to change ground realities.

Barely 10 days ago, the BCCI central contract for 2025-26 dropped the 35-year-old from the list — which was understandable as it’s imperative for a cricketer to be part of international cricket in at least one format for the last 12 months to figure in it. The last time Shami put on an India jersey was the ICC Champions Trophy in Dubai in Jasprit Bumrah’s absence, where he picked up nine wickets in five games to emerge as the highest wicket taker on India's way to the title.

It’s difficult to say what transpired thereafter to keep Shami — a class act who just needed a little cotton-woolling to prolong his career — out of the discussion altogether. There must be some lesson in the way Cricket Australia has been trying to manage the careers of the troika of Starc-Cummins-Hazlewood despite two of them being in their mid-30s, or the way England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) accorded special treatment to James Anderson not so long ago.

Mind you, Australia are known to be completely dispassionate about letting old blood go, but they certainly saw merit in using the Big Three by rotation — with Mitchell Starc opting out of T20 rigours.

If the BCCI can bend over backwards to think about Bumrah’s workload management, make an allowance for the Big Two of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma to just play one format despite a conspicuous lack of gametime, what stopped the powers that be (there is no point in trolling Ajit Agarkar alone) from creating another niche role?

There are media reports which suggest that one reason for the selection committee’s apathy could be that Shami was reluctant to tour England last June-July for the Test series despite the board’s overtures. The pace ace, who was the highest wicket-taker in the last ICC World Cup on Indian soil in 2023 (24 wickets from only seven games), reportedly said he needed some more time to regain match fitness for red-ball cricket. Neither has Shami confirmed this in any of his interviews, nor the BCCI clarified it, but at the end of the day, a professional athlete is the best judge of his fitness level.

If the issue was that of the veteran — who already has a storied but injury-ravaged career spanning over 15 years — chickening out from a last hurrah, Shami has already proved his doubters wrong. Ever since October 2025, he has given his all for Bengal with his old-school combination of seam and swing, and playing the reticent elder statesman to the likes of Abhimanyu Easwaran & Co.

A batting collapse by Bengal in the second innings has now jeopardised their chances of making it to the Ranji Trophy final after three seasons, but there’s no denying the contribution of Shami — who claimed 36 Ranji wickets in 12 innings at an economy rate of 2.71 after J & K’s first innings. This accounted for more than 50 per cent of his 67 wickets in the season across Ranji, Vijay Hazare Trophy and Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.

Shami’s histrionics, at the unlikely setting of the serene Bengal Cricket Academy (BCA) ground in Kalyani over Monday-Tuesday, has sparked outrage of sorts in national media, who are branding it as a strong ‘update’ for Agarkar & Co. There are no dearth of international fixtures after the IPL, with a Test series against Sri Lanka and a white-ball tour of England being lined up one after the other should there be a change of heart.

The bitter truth of the moment is: the country’s pace bowling reserves are not exactly overflowing with talent, unlike in batting. Leaving aside Bumrah’s case, the think tank has time and again relied on Mohammed Siraj as the workhorse while Harshit Rana — who got knocked out of the ongoing T20 World Cup with a freak injury — is still work in progress. Arshdeep Singh, despite being India’s highest wicket-taker in T20Is, doesn’t seem to inspire enough confidence in the team management, while Prasiddh Krishna has veered between the sublime and the ridiculous.

Under the circumstances, is it too much to expect a second chance for Shami? Or does he need to read the writing on the wall and move on?