Dubai: As a cricketer, Mohammad Shami has seen quite a few dark phases in his life. If the journey into the unknown as a 16-year-old when his father sent him to Kolkata to try his luck in club cricket was one fraught with uncertainties, the struggle to recover from a knee surgery soon after finishing as the highest wicket-taker for India in the 2015 World Cup was no less fascinating.
However, on both occasions, it was an unshakeable faith on his own abilities which had seen the youngster from the back-of-beyond Amroha in Uttar Pradesh proving himself to become one of the leaders of the fast bowling unit of Indian team in no time.
This time, as Shami’s world came crashing down over the past week with his wife Hasin Jahan pressing damning charges against him and the family, he will be despondent that no amount of cricketing talent will be enough to save the day.
Will this severe personal crisis mean the end of Shami’s career? This is the over-riding question playing on the minds of the Indian cricket fan as his wife for four years has heaped allegations that suddenly makes the soft-spoken 28-year-old look like a demonic character — a “two-faced” womaniser, guilty of domestic violence and trying to murder his wife, a pervert of sorts with even insinuations of him being capable of ‘match-fixing.’
The episode has been a huge culture shock for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which has admitted that it was his wife’s criminal charges which made them drop the country’s premier fast bowler from the central contracts list last Wednesday. His participation in the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL) is also doubtful as his franchise Delhi Daredevils say they will wait for direction from the Indian cricket board on his availability.
“We are waiting for a direction from BCCI on him,” Delhi Daredevils chief executive Hemant Dua told the media on Saturday. “We approached the BCCI on this. It’s a tri-partite agreement between the player, the franchise and the BCCI,” he said.
The charges on six counts, including Section 498 A (domestic violence for dowry or otherwise) which is a non-bailable offence, makes him prone to arrest and a remand in police custody — making Shami’s inclusion in the Indian team completely untenable for now. Informed sources in the Indian board said that the Committee of Administrators (CoA) had also tipped off Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri, the captain and manager, about their decision to keep Shami off the contracts list.
“Ordinarily, you would distinguish and say that (the allegation) is a personal issue and the contract is a professional issue,” Vinod Rai, chairman of the CoA told a cricket website.
“But someone could easily point out and say this allegation is an unsavoury one and you are still rewarding him (Shami),” the former bureaucrat said with reference to Shami’s contract being put on hold.
It’s a battle that Shami will have to fight for himself — even as the turn of affairs has left the cricketing fraternity in Bengal in a state of shock. Indian cricket, not to speak of the high-testosterone world of sportspersons, is no stranger to affairs or salacious gossip about some of it’s biggest stars — but the degree of the charges from the wife threatens to reveal a split personality in the bowler.
Quite a few members of Bengal cricket fraternity, who know Shami personally, told Gulf News that they find most of the allegations hard to believe — with the pace bowler coming across as a self-effacing person and a Facebook junkie who would post photos of himself, Hasin and their two-year-old daughter Aaira frequently — the last occasion being as recent as Holi (Festival of Colours) on March 1.
As things stand, Indian cricket will have to do without one of its committed servants for now — who had impressed the aficionados of the game with his lovely action, ability to move the ball both ways and the art of reverse swing over the last five years. But then, Shami clearly has different priorities at the moment!
