Shadab Khan is back, and he’s better than ever

“The rhythm is getting better”, read Shadab Khan’s tweet from December 13, after the first Pakistan-West Indies T20I in Karachi. Shadab had just finished with a match-winning three-wicket haul, his eighth in a four-year T20I career. The leg-spinner began with a bang, but his form tailed off as he progressed further. 2019 and 2020 were particularly underwhelming years for a player considered to have immense potential. Having conceded runs at 6.58 runs per over in his first two years as a T20I cricketer, his next two saw him leak runs at 8.69 runs per over. His bowling strike-rate shot up from 22 balls per wicket to 30, with his ability to break through also deserting him. It’s all coming back now.

In the first half of 2021, Shadab was troubled by a toe injury that kept him out of the South Africa series, throwing a wrench in his preparations for the World Cup. When he returned, the ‘rhythm’ wasn’t quite there – he began the season with expensive figures of 3-52 against England in July. There wasn’t anything striking about his subsequent spells ahead of the World Cup either.

At the biggest stage, in his first T20 World Cup appearance, Shadab found his mojo again. Beginning with the India game, where his spell of 1-22 sucked out all momentum in the middle overs, Shadab has been truly phenomenal. The numbers so far read 20 T20I wickets at 17.80 from 17 games. All at a neat economy of 6.47.

And while it isn’t a record-breaking number, and not even the highest tally of 2021 from Pakistan (quicks Haris Rauf, Hassan Ali and Shaheen Afridi have more), it’s a good representation of how far Shadab has come from the struggles of 2019 and 2020, where he averaged 56.75 and 35.85 respectively with the ball, picking up 11 wickets from 17 T20Is. The drop in form wasn’t just limited to Pakistan – he also had mediocre returns in the last two PSLs, and hardly made an impact in the National T20 Cup.

Now, with injuries behind him, Shadab is getting into the groove as Pakistan’s lead attacking spinner, acting as the perfect supplement to their brawny pace army. In the World Cup semi-final against Australia, he almost took his side home, scything through their top order with a four-wicket haul. If it weren’t for Matthew Wade, Shadab’s 4-26 would have been Pakistan’s ticket to the final. And it’s not just about the wickets; Shadab ties up batters in the middle overs – in his last 14 innings, he’s conceded over 30 runs just twice, bowling a full quota of overs in 11 of those games.

Bowling only makes one-half of Shadab, the cricketer, albeit the dominant side. His batting form has been on an upward curve since he took over Islamabad United in PSL 2020, giving himself a promotion up the order. In nine games, he struck 263 runs at 37.57, striking at 159.39. There’s little scope to have that sort of a promotion in the Pakistan line-up that’s already resplendent with batting might, but he’s been right on the money in his role as a finisher in the limited opportunities that present themselves.

He hardly got a batting gig at the World Cup, but a couple of knocks in the last month have shown his resourcefulness down the order. Against Bangladesh in the first T20I at Dhaka, his power-packed 10-ball 21* from No. 7 helped them chase down 128 when they were 24-4 at one point. More recently, his 12-ball 28* powered Pakistan to 172 in the second T20I against West Indies, the cameo enough to earn him the Player of the Match award. Overall, he averages 46 with the bat in 2021, striking at 170.37.

An attacking leg-spinner, a lively lower-order bat and an exceptional fielder – Shadab is a combination of all that Pakistan’s white-ball team has yearned for years. A mix of poor form and injuries, the first one also a product of the second, threatened to erode what had been a great start to his career (until the end of 2018, he had picked 42 wickets at 17.17). Going by how he seems to be gradually improving, the storm after the two-year lull could be even better than the first wave.