The Indian fast bowler, Mohammed Shami seems to have intensified his ‘4 to 8 PM’ home practice drill. The pace spearhead of the Indian team had recently told Aaj Tak that he trains religiously during the aforementioned time period and instructs people from his family to not allow anyone to disturb him then.
During a chat with Aaj Tak, Shami had said, “I don’t meet anybody between 4 to 8 pm. That is the time I use to practice. I’ve put out a board outside my house saying no meet between 4-8 pm. I’ve told my brother that I don’t want to see even a single person around me when I’m practicing, barring the coach, my younger brother, and a couple of other boys who train with me.”
In the video shared by Shami on Friday he can be seen taking a brisk run-up before delivering the ball to the batsman. Captioning the same, he wrote: “Practice session at home,” Shami captioned the video. The video had audio with some motivational words in it.
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The audio said, “Na thake hai paav kabhi na hi himmat haari, mene dekhe hai kai daur aur aaj bhi safar jaari hai (My leg never got tires and my courage has never been defeated, I have seen a lot of difficult phases but my journey still continues strongly).”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBmrWjGJ1Sh/
Notably, Mohammed Shami went through a rough patch in 2018 and 2019. Recalling his turbulent time, the pacer had recently told Rohit Sharma in an Instagram Live Session that suiciding was in his mind for once.
Shami had elaborated, “I thought of committing suicide three times during that period due to severe stress and personal problems. I was not thinking about cricket at all. We were living on the 24th floor. They (family) were scared I might jump from the balcony. My 2-3 friends used to stay with me for 24 hours. My parents asked me to focus on cricket to recover from that phase and not think about anything else. I started training then and sweated it out a lot at an academy in Dehradun.”
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The Amroha-born cricketer has also expressed his concern over the saliva ban in cricket. Shami has opined that it will be a challenge for the bowlers to reverse-wing the ball.
The Indian pacer further elaborated, “We use sweat to make the ball heavier and softer but reverse swing needs saliva, it keeps the ball harder, shinier and the ball reverses also. Now the challenge will be not to use our saliva which will be our biggest challenge. We have been used to this since childhood and it has a huge contribution in the reverse swing. Now it will be very difficult and challenging.”