Confused Ishant heading the Irfan way?

Biswajit Jha Two years back when Ishant Sharma first burst on to the international arena in Australia, it was a real treat to the eyes for the Indian fans. It was after a long time that they were watching Ricky Ponting gasping for breath whenever the beanpole pacer took the red cherry in his hands. In that series, he was bubbling with energy, spraying venom with the ball, terrorizing the opposition with speed, swing, in-cutters and accuracy. Not only Ponting, Ishant made the best in the business suffer with his unplayable in-cutters. He continued to do the same after his debut series Down Under for a year or so. His each salvo was on target. The success made him one of most potent trump cards for Team India and he was seen as a long term server of Indian cricket. He went on to forge a formidable opening bowling pair with seasoned Zaheer Khan, which has been one of the main reasons for India’s ascendancy to the number one spot in the ICC ODI rankings. But alas! The present Ishant Sharma whom we have been witnessing for the last six months is a shadow of his former self. He lost his fabled in-cutter and swing, he slowed down, his confidence hit the lowest ebb and his drooping shoulders suggest that something is terribly wrong with the new pace sensation of Indian cricket. Dhoni had no option but to drop him for the last match of Champions Trophy, where India lost due to their toothless bowling. Ishant Sharma, who was supposed to lead the pace attack in the absence of Zaheer Khan, disappointed one and all with his performance on the field, bowling too short and too wide in the entire Champions Trophy. One can dispel the concern by saying that Ishant is suffering from second-season blues, a phenomenon suffered by every bowler, when he does not remain a surprise and batsmen around the world start to pick him easily in the second year of his career. But the worrying factor is not that Ishant has not been able to come up with something new in his armory to outsmart the opposition batsmen, it’s because he has failed to reproduce the vicious in-cutters which made him a dangerous proponent on any kind of pitch and against any batsman. The hard-to-pick in-cutters was his USP, like what swing was to Irfan Pathan in his haydays. His perfectly pitched in-cutters delivered from close-to-the-stumps earned him many a success in the past. And if anyone loses his main weapon, it’s very hard for him to repeat the same amount of success. Even M S Dhoni, under whom Ishant grew from strength to strength as a bowler, seems to have lost confidence on the Delhi pacer. “He isn’t the bowler he once was,” said Dhoni before dropping him in the Champions Trophy.Is Ishant going the Irfan Pathan way? We have a living example of Irfan Pathan, coming with a bang, but slowly fading into oblivion within couple of seasons. Like Ishant, Pathan also took the cricketing world by surprise with his almost unplayable swinging deliveries, which made him an instant success, an icon, a hero and a Sultan of Swing, and what not. But couple of seasons later, he lost his swing. His chief weapon which once used to baffle the best batters was lost somewhere. After that, he was not the same bowler he used to be and despite some serious efforts and the several well-wishers, he never regained his lost art and the glory which came with that. Pundits around the world generally have a lot to offer by way of advice when such things happen to anybody. And the player who goes through such a phenomenon fails to understand what the best is for him, which advice he should heed to and which one he should avoid.What Ishant needs now is a little break from international cricket. He needs to go back to basics and work with his coach of formative years who has shaped him into a world class bowler from an ordinary guy. Concentrating on his strength will help him regain his lost art as well as vanished self-confidence. Pathan did not follow these basic truths and is paying a hefty price for that. Hope, good sense prevails on young Ishant….