Star Indian pacer Mohammed Shami has revealed the reason behind not representing Uttar Pradesh (UP) in domestic cricket. Notably, Shami was born and brought up in UP, but he represents Bengal in domestic competitions. During a recent interview with Puma, the fast bowler revealed that he was desperate to play for his native state in the Ranji Trophy but received repeated rejections in trials despite good performances.
“I had gone to give trials for the UP Ranji Trophy team for 2 years, but whenever the final round came, they used to kick me out.” Shami said in an interview with PUMA. “When I was not selected after the trials in the first year, I thought it didn’t matter. Will come again next time, but next year the same thing happened again,” the 33-year-old recalled while speaking in an interview with Puma.
“My brother was staying with me at that time. They spoke to a chief who was in charge. At that time, brother received a response that he had never received before in his life. The chief that ‘if you can move my chair, the boy will be selected; he is very good, otherwise, sorry'”, Shami revealed.
“So, my brother said, ‘forget about moving, I can even turn it upside down, I have so much strength, but I don’t want it if you think my brother [Shami] has talent, only then take him. So, the chief said that there is no place for strong people here. My brother tore the form and said, ‘After today, you won’t play for UP'”, the Indian pacer recalled.
Eventually, Shami ended up playing for Bengal and got into the Indian team due to his exploits for Bengal.
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Speaking about the Indian fast bowler, he had a dream run in the World Cup. The 33-year-old picked up 24 wickets in just 7 matches and finished as the highest wicket taker of the tournament. Shami shattered a lot of records in the World Cup. He became the quickest bowler to get to 50 WC wickets in just 17 innings beating the previous record held by Mitchell Starc of 19 innings in the WC.
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