Wisden’s men’s ODI spell of 2023, No.1: Mohammed Siraj – 6-21

India vs Sri Lanka
Asia Cup 2023 final
R Premadasa Stadium, Colombo, September 17

Mohammed Siraj bowls on a good length. Kusal Mendis swings his bat, trying to clear mid-on. They usually come off when Mendis is in form – which he is: that dazzling 91 had been only three days ago – but he misses this one. The ball whooshes past the outside edge.

Siraj pitches up again. Mendis drives again, and misses again as well, but this time it is the inside edge that is beaten, for Siraj has brought this one in, pegging the middle stump back. The old one-two trick gets Sri Lanka’s most dangerous batter.

The wicket should have been talked about for at least a couple of days, but the interest around the most important match in Asian cricket had started to dwindle half an hour before that.

Colombo had come to cheer for their heroes that day, men who had won a thriller to go past Pakistan in that pivotal Super Fours match. True, India had thrashed them by 317 runs at Thiruvananthapuram earlier that year, but this was a final, and in a final, both teams begin on equal footing.

They probably did not think much of Jasprit Bumrah taking out Kusal Perera in the first over. Bumrah does these things every now and then, and when had Perera ever been consistent? Here was Mendis, off-driving the first ball for four. He would sort things out.

It was in the second over that everyone began to notice that something was different. Mendis could not put bat on ball for the entire over. Of course, he left two of them alone, but Siraj beat the outside edge of Sri Lanka’s in-form batter four times in one over.

After the usual claustrophobic Bumrah over, Siraj returned. Three overs, eight runs, read the score. Pathum Nissanka decided to place the ball to the right of the fielder at point – a shot opening batters have played against the new ball since the inception of the ODI powerplay. Unfortunately for Nissanka, the fielder was Ravindra Jadeja.

Two balls later, Sri Lanka lost a review as Sadeera Samarawickrama tried to revert a leg-before decision. The left-handed Charith Asalanka pushed at the next ball without reaching the pitch of the ball, and paid the price by getting caught at cover.

Dhananjaya de Silva got it easy to begin with, a pitched-up ball on the pads that he calmly placed past mid-on – vacant, mind you, to enhance the umbrella of slips and gullies. As Ishan Kishan sprinted, so did Siraj, having bowled eleven balls and on the verge of sending down more. The ball won the race.

It did not matter. De Silva edged the next ball into the big gloves of KL Rahul, sending cricket statisticians around the world into a mode of frenzy. Until Siraj, no Indian had taken four wickets in an over in any format in international cricket. It was also the fourth time anyone did this in ODIs.

Siraj had ripped the heart out of the Sri Lankan innings before you would have finished reading this piece. The hosts lay threadbare at 12-5 after four overs, hoping to play out Siraj.

Bumrah, suddenly the lesser of the two threats after that over from hell at the other end, responded with another maiden. Siraj would get six chances at Dasun Shanaka, yet to face a ball. He needed four.

He beat the outside edge once, twice, thrice, and pitched the fourth ball on off stump. Shanaka assumed it would come at him, perhaps on a middle-stump line, and tried to flick off his pads. Instead, the ball held its line, leaving the off-stump spread-eagled.

No bowler in recorded history had taken fewer balls than Siraj’s 16 for a five-wicket haul. The Mendis wicket came much, much later, in his sixth over. He finished with 7-1-21-6, arguably ‘saner’ figures than the 2.4-1-4-5 it was at one point.

“Siraj did not want to stop bowling,” informed Rohit Sharma at the post-match press conference, but the team management had sent out a message. Workload management.

Sri Lanka eventually made 50, a quasi-recovery from 12-6, and a soothing balm for old-timers who remember the ignominy of India’s 54 all out in the final of the 2000/01 Coca-Cola Champions Trophy. India won before sunset.

Perhaps to remind the Sri Lankan fans of this devastation, Siraj would claim three wickets in his next seven balls against them – but that is another story.