India was without Bumrah in the recently concluded the Oval Test which meant the responsibility was on Mohammad Siraj to finish off things for India. Siraj was the leader of the pace attack in the absence of Bumrah. Siraj also had a guilt in his heart when he took the catch of Harry Brook he had crossed the boundary line, and Brook ended up scoring a century to make the match more interesting.
After the game, Siraj was in a post-match press conference with his captain Shubman Gill and told everyone it was belief that helped him win a game for India and it was that belief for which he was up at 06:00 AM instead of 08:00 AM.
“I usually wake up at 8am, but today I woke up at 6am. I told myself I can do it today. I went on Google and searched for this image,” he said at the press conference after the match, raising his phone to show Ronaldo’s picture with “BELIEVE” written above it. “I downloaded the image, and made it the wallpaper. So belief is very important.”
Belief is what allowed Siraj to bounce back from the mistake of reprieving Brook on 19.
At the press conference following India’s victory, his captain, Shubman Gill, sat beside him and joked that Siraj might have saved everyone a great deal of worry if he had kept the catch.
“Also, if you had taken the catch, [I’m] thinking [it] would have been too easy for us,” Gill said as Siraj broke into a chuckle like the rest of the room.
Siraj, who bowled 185.3 overs in the series to finish as the top wicket-taker with 23 wickets, was named Player-of-the-Match for his nine wickets at The Oval. Siraj appeared at the news conference beaming, thanking the supporters as he bounced around the field with the ball in hand after the victory. He had been toiling for the past two months, but he showed no signs of it because he was high on dopamine.
“Body is fine right now because it is almost 187 overs,” Siraj said when asked whether he felt exhausted. “But [when] you play for the country, you give everything. Don’t think too much [whether] you bowl the sixth over or you bowl your ninth over. I don’t care. I believe you bowl every ball for your country, not for yourself. [When] you play for the country, give it everything. Rest doesn’t matter.”
When asked about his improvement as a bowler, he said he always believed in bowling in partnership and believing in himself.
“As for my improvement, I always believe in my bowling that I can take a wicket in any situation. I don’t mind whether I am bowling the first spell or eighth. I just need to give 100%. I have never run after results. Rather [I’m] focused on the process of how to build pressure by bowling in partnerships.”
Siraj knows exactly why he is where he is – bowling India to one of their most famous victories, and their narrowest, by a margin of six runs.
“Stay honest to your game,” he says. “Believe in yourself. Without belief, nothing can happen.”
