Siraj keeps it Real as last-minute recall trumps travel plans

Mohammed Siraj had just finished leading Hyderabad in the league stage of the Ranji Trophy in back-to-back games. Since his team didn't make the knockouts, he had put his feet up, planned to travel to Madrid next week for a football match between Real Madrid and Real Sociedad, and then planned to be with his family during Ramzan before the IPL.

But then came a work call.

"'Miyan bag pack karke aaja (pack your bags and come),'" Siraj recalled, after getting a message from India T20I captain Suryakumar Yadav. Siraj immediately told him not to mess with him. When Suryakumar again said that he wasn't joking and Siraj had to join the India team for the T20 World Cup, Siraj packed his bags for the flight, joined the team at 3am in Mumbai in the wee hours of the opening day of the World Cup, did some homework on the opposition, then got some sleep. He woke up to a message that he was going to slot right into the XI against USA.

Siraj had not played a T20I since July 2024, not long after India's victory in the previous T20 World Cup. But when he got the chance to open the bowling on Saturday, he made the new ball talk like he had never let it go.

With two quick wickets in his first spell, he and Arshdeep Singh reduced USA to 13 for 3, which set the tone for India to defend their score of 161.

"Almighty changed my destiny in 24 hours," an emotional Siraj said in the press conference after India's 29-run win. "I was spending time with my family when Adrian (Le Roux, India's strength and conditioning coach) messaged me to ask what I was up to. I told him, 'don't message me right now, I'm resting after playing two four-day games. I need rest.'"

Not only was Siraj's call-up sudden, as a late injury replacement for Harshit Rana, but it also came with some luck. When Siraj joined the squad, India's ace fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah was down with an illness and didn't train with the side on the eve of the game. If India wanted to play two fast bowlers, Siraj was the only option to partner Arshdeep.

On what he described as a two-paced pitch, Siraj corrected his length quickly after being smashed for six on his second ball. His supple wrists pitched one in the channel outside off which Andries Gous drove uppishly straight to point. In his next over, Siraj alternated between that length and his lethal back-of-a-delivery that nips off the pitch, and this time Saiteja Mukkamalla mistimed one straight to midwicket. With two wickets in eight deliveries, Siraj had shown his time away from the T20I set-up hadn't taken much edge off his A game.

"Since I was coming here after Ranji Trophy, I stuck to similar line and length here," Siraj said. "I saw that when we were batting, the new ball wasn't coming on easily on the bat. So my plan was also to bowl wicket-to-wicket which worked and helped the team. I'm very happy that the execution worked out and I got those wickets."

Siraj didn't change his game in those months when he was out of the T20I side, nor did he change his phone wallpaper from the poster of his football hero Cristiano Ronaldo, with the text "BELIEVE" that had motivated him to seal India's emphatic win on the last day of the Oval Test in England last year. His approach to playing at the highest level stayed the same too.

"You have to be mentally ready to play in a World Cup," he said. "Now I'm also closing in on 10 years since I started playing for India, I have been with the team continuously, and for long enough to know how to prepare in this format, and what kind of mindset to have. So while going to bed at night I told myself to just stick to the things that have worked for me so far, and that's what I did today."

Joining a team at 3am in a format he hasn't played in a while is not new for Siraj. Early in December, Siraj had been called up suddenly by Hyderabad in the middle of the 20-over Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, a tournament he hadn't played in four years. On that occasion too, Siraj quickly hopped on a flight from Hyderabad to join his side in Kolkata late at night and played the next evening to return with frugal figures of 4-0-15-1 that restricted Uttar Pradesh to 127 and set up a three-wicket win.

On Saturday against USA, Siraj also struck on the last ball to seal India's victory, which might make him forget about his late-night flight, the "shock" call-up and surge of emotions as the crowd chanted his nickname "DSP, DSP" when he opened the bowling.

The only compromise is, he might have to watch that La Liga game in his hotel room.