Duleep Trophy: Shivam Mavi gets big fish to push case for India recall

Shivam Mavi with a red ball in hand looks in the right place. With a smooth run-up which gains pace with each step, Mavi is in the exclusive pool of talented fast bowlers that the selectors and the Indian team management are keeping a close eye on. With an effortless action, pace comes naturally to him, and after battling his fair share of injuries in the past, including a stress fracture, Mavi is now beginning to live up to his potential.
On Day 1, at the Three Ovals in Alur, leading Central Zone in the Duleep Trophy semi-final against West Zone, what stood out about Mavi was how he chose the right moments to bring himself on. Having bowled a probing spell up front with the new ball, he brought himself on when Cheteshwar Pujara and Suryakumar Yadav came together shortly after the drinks break. The overhead conditions reminded him of the UK, so sending down long spells was not an issue. Having bowled five overs first up, he had got a breather, and took the responsibility ahead of Avesh Khan to have a go at the new batsmen.
Mavi is a very rhythmic bowler in the sense that once he finds the right line and length to operate on a pitch, he rarely deviates from it. And through the course of Day 1, once he figured out the lengths to bowl, he stuck to it, posing all sorts of questions to a West Zone batting line-up that had a wealth of experience.
When Mavi took the ball in the 21st over for his second spell, the situation demanded him to be on the dot with his execution as Suryakumar was itching to counter-attack his way out of trouble. He had shown his intentions slicing a shot over cover for a boundary, but Mavi was up for it. He delivered a back of a length delivery that Suryakumar edged to second slip, which was shelled Vivek Singh.
Mavi didn’t react. He quietly turned around and walked back to his mark as if to show he can induce the same error from a batsman who has smashed the living daylights of some of the best in the business. Off the next ball, he repeated the same delivery, which dismissed Suryakumar in the same manner he had plotted the dismissal – caught at slip.
“It doesn’t matter to me who the batsman is. For me, it is all about bowling in the right areas and I know if I can do that, I will get wickets,” Mavi said. Having got the big scalp, he then turned his eyes on the new batsman Sarfaraz Khan. Unlike Suryakumar, he prefers to leave deliveries and Mavi didn’t take long to realise the need to make him play as much as possible. From back of a length, he slightly shifted to pitching the ball up, as Sarfaraz looked a bit vulnerable.
Planning and execution
With a tight field to deny him a single to get off the mark, he ensured left-arm spinner Saurabh Kumar bowled a bit quicker to Pujara that prevented the batsman from using his feet as he pinned him at one end so that he could have a go at Sarfaraz again.
Mavi would keep luring Sarfaraz into committing to a loose drive, and now it was becoming a cat-and-mouse game with Sarfaraz in no mood to take the bait.
But little did Sarfaraz know that Mavi was bluffing all along. In his next over, having seen Sarfaraz take a step down and shoulder arms, Mavi would now surprise the batsman with one that climbed as Sarfaraz ended up being in an awkward position and the ball hit his left arm before ricocheting onto the stumps.
The plot was perfect, and the execution was top-notch once again. It is something Mavi would repeat through the course of the day, which saw him also dismiss Pujara before ending up with figures of 6/44 as West Zone folded for 220 in the first innings in the morning session on Day 2.
Having picked up three wickets in the quarter-final against East last week, Mavi has nine in three innings as he makes all the right noises for a recall to the national side. The last few months have been a rollercoaster for him. Having finished the Ranji Trophy with 19 wickets in the four matches he played, he featured in the T20s against New Zealand, before warming the bench throughout the IPL for Gujarat Titans. He would use those two months tuning in for red-ball cricket, bowling long spells in the nets.
“Getting selected for a match is not in my hands. It depends on the coach and captain. But I was using that time and doing net sessions. I was bowling long spells at nets and was in a good space. I was bowling 7 -8 overs in the nets. I kept myself motivated thinking that I will get a chance sooner and I was focusing on improving my skills,” Mavi added.
The athlete monitoring system that he has to wear at all times when he takes the field as well as when bowling in the nets is an indication of how the selectors and the National Cricket Academy are monitoring him. Part of the fast bowling pool, his workload is being looked at on a regular basis. “I have been performing well with the red ball in the last three or four years. Hopefully, I will get to play Test matches. It is not like I want to play only one format and I am working hard to be ready for all three,” Mavi said.