At the end of third day's play in the second Test between India and West Indies, the possibility of a result looked far-fetched. The pitch was flat, West Indies had batted well while India had picked only four wickets after bowling 67 overs. India's bowling coach Paras Mhambrey had also conceded that it was tough picking 20 wickets on the unresponsive surface in Port of Spain.
But Mohammed Siraj stunningly turned up on the fourth morning and swung the game on its head picking up four wickets in just 3.4 overs of his spell to rip apart West Indies. That allowed India to score some quick runs in their second essay and are now eight wickets away from registering yet another 2-0 series win in the Caribbean. Ahead of the series, Siraj was the most experienced pacer in the fast-bowling attack having played 19 Test matches.
But he has picked up the mantle superbly and is enjoying the responsibility at the moment. "To be honest, I feel really good when you are given an extra responsibility [of leading the attack]. It's a great feeling and it's a challenge too. When no one else is there, I have to get on the ground and show some responsibility. I like accepting this challenge," Siraj said at the end of fourth day's play.
Siraj returned with the figures of 5/60 in the first innings of the second Test and will play a crucial role in the second innings as well. Speaking about his performance, the pace bowler from Hyderabad also conceded that the pitch is extremely flat and how important it was to keep his line within the stumps to keep the batter under the pump.
"First of all, this performance was really good because it's not easy to take a five-fer on such a flat wicket. The pitch wasn't doing much. I wanted to keep it stump to stump. From there if it seams, it's really good. That was my plan, just to keep executing this simple plan. Today we had a relatively new ball too, so it was swinging. Tomorrow we'll start with an older ball, we'll have to keep simple plans, not give away too many runs and just keep building the pressure," Siraj further added.
