Mohammed Shami and Ishant Sharma toughest to keep wickets to, says Wriddhiman Saha

With Indians returning back to the whites, a new Indian team would step onto the field, with a number of Test specialist within the Indian ranks. Which means that quality players such as Murali Vijay, Cheteshwar Pujara, Wriddhiman Saha, Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja return to the fold of action after a long layoff.

In the pre-match conference, India’s first choice wicketkeeper-batsman in Tests claimed that keeping to the likes of Ishant Sharma and Mohammad Shami is far more difficult than Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Umesh Yadav, due to the movement once the ball passes by the batsmen.

“Ishant Sharma and Mohammad Shami are the bowlers which are hard to face as a wicket-keeper. Their deliveries swing more in comparison to Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Umesh Yadav after crossing the wickets. Those balls seems tough to grab behind the wickets,” claimed Wriddhiman Saha according to the recent press conference.

We are not preparing for South Africa by playing against Sri Lanka: Saha

He was then quizzed the same for the spinners. There he named Ashwin to be the difficult one to keep wickets too and cited out that Ashwin has more variation when compared to Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja. “Among the spinners, it’s Ravichandran Ashwin as he has more variations in his bowling than Jadeja and Kuldeep,” replied Saha.

“If you could read their arm action, 50 percent of the job is done there itself. Then comes the wicket factor that how much the track is turning. So, the main challenge to grab all the balls whether it turns or not,” further professed Saha. The West Bengal stalwart then revealed that the Indian team is not looking at the upcoming Sri Lankan series to prepare for the South African tour.

“All matches are equally important. It’s not like that we are preparing ourselves for South Africa by playing against Sri Lanka. The tracks are totally different. We need to focus first on the games against Sri Lanka. Later, the executions will be done as per the South Africa’s track conditions,” concluded Saha.