In the absence of Jasprit Bumrah in the 5th and final Test of the series, many had written off India. But they forgot to factor in the impact that the underrated Mohammed Siraj tends to bring in crunch situations. Often overshadowed by his more celebrated colleague, Siraj showed on Monday why he was a superstar in his own right when he snapped up 5 wickets in the 4th innings to hand India a famous win at the Oval.
“To be honest, it feels amazing. We wanted to fight hard from Day 1 and to see this result is great. The plan was to keep it simple and hit one spot. When I woke up today I believed that I could do it. And when I woke up in the morning, I went to Google and found an emoji of believe. I put it on my wallpaper and said that I will do it,” Siraj said after the match. He later showed that wallpaper to the media. It featured Cristiano Ronaldo and a solitary word that became his driving force — ‘Believe’.
There was also a moment in the match which almost caused Siraj to think that they had lost the match. It was on Day 4 when he had taken Harry Brook’s catch when they batter was just getting started but could not keep his balance and touched the boundary ropes giving away a six. The batter would ultimately go on to score a century which at that point of time looked to take the match away from India.
“If I had taken that (Brook) catch properly probably we may not have had to come today. It was a game-changing moment. But Brook played really well, hats off to him for playing attacking cricket,” Siraj said.
The bowler also shared what the Lord’s loss by 22 runs felt like and what his batting partner in that Test, Ravindra Jadeja was telling him.
“It was a heart-breaking moment (The Lord’s loss). He (Jadeja) was just telling me to play with a straight bat and middle the ball. He told me to remember my father and the hard work he put in to get me here,” he said.
