Mohammed Siraj had been doing well for India in both limited-overs formats for some time when he was left out of their squad for the Champions Trophy. Even in Jasprit Bumrah's absence, Siraj didn't find a place in the 15-man squad. India wanted a left-arm quick, a tall, into-the-pitch bowler, and the expected conditions put a premium on the extra spinner. There was only one spot left for the traditional seam bowler, which went to Mohammed Shami, who was returning from injury.
India were looking for someone who could run through a side when he got on a roll. Siraj had been doing this in 2023, but had gradually become a steady bowler since then. He didn't have out-and-out bad days, but he didn't run away with big hauls either. As any proud competitor, Siraj was upset by this exclusion coming hot on the heels of a release from his beloved IPL franchise Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB).
"To be honest, at the start, I couldn't digest it," Siraj said after his second straight Player-of-the-Match performance in IPL 2025, for Gujarat Titans (GT) against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH). Put together international cricket and the IPL, and he won two in all of 2024. Now he has two in four days.
It will not quite be fair to call his exclusion a blessing in disguise, because there is no guarantee Siraj wouldn't have done well in the Champions Trophy, but the break it gave him seems to have done him good. Through that break, Siraj followed the classic arc of struggling to come to terms with it before putting in the hard work to try and come back better.
"I reached a point when I had to convince my mind that my cricket is not over," Siraj said. "That I have bigger plans. Okay, this [Champions Trophy] was not in my destiny, but what can I do now? I got my mindset right, I worked on my fitness. I was playing non-stop, so I didn't have time to reflect on what mistakes had crept into my game. So I worked on it. Now I am enjoying my bowling. The body is fresh, I am not overthinking, I am staying in the present."
It is important to remember that as Shami and Bumrah grappled with fitness issues, Siraj was the one constant in India's team. He was perhaps denied the break that fast bowlers need to carry out running repairs. Since the start of 2023, only Ravindra Jadeja has bowled more overs for India than Siraj.
Now Siraj already has more powerplay wickets in this IPL - six - than he managed in the entirety of the 2024 season. Again, just looking at wickets is neither accurate nor fair when it comes to T20. It's his control that has been impressive. In this game - played on a slow and low pitch - Siraj bowled three straight overs in the powerplay. Only five deliveries went fuller than good length. Three of them were just a fact-finding mission in the first over.
Once he knew there was no swing, Siraj bowled almost robotically to capitalise on the lack of pace in the pitch. There was no anxiety to go looking for wickets. The result was 11 dot balls to Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma, and both their wickets.
With the old ball, Siraj drew a hint of reverse swing - he acknowledged the use of saliva to maintain the ball - which has been reinstated in this IPL - helped him pick up two more wickets at the death.
In his last game, against Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Siraj started the match with a sharp bouncer that nearly got Phil Salt out first ball. Only a handful of games in the 18 years of the IPL have started with a short ball bowled in anger. That Siraj was sharp enough from the get-go to bowl one with both venom and direction perhaps said something about his state of mind and body. There is perhaps a freshness to Siraj that makes a case for regular breaks. But now that Siraj finds himself on a roll, GT - and India? - won't want to miss a thing.