'Very happy to see him do so well' - Jason Gillespie lauds Ishant Sharma's five-wicket haul against New Zealand

The Indian cricket team might be staring down the barrel in the first Test at the Basin Reserve in Wellington but the fact that they managed to restrict the Kiwis to 348 was largely due to the lion-hearted effort from pace spearhead Ishant Sharma.

After having passed the fitness test and travelling to New Zealand at the nth hour, Ishant braved jetlag to put on a lion-hearted effort for his side by claiming his 11th five-wicket haul; his second in three innings at Wellington and in as many Test matches for the Men in Blue.

Jason Gillespie took to Twitter to hail the 96-Test veteran for his lion-hearted effort, crediting Ishant’s desire to learn and improve as the reason for his success.

“Very happy to see Ishant do so well- all down to his attitude to want to learn and improve and get better. The current coaching staff of the @BCCI team need to take a lot of credit,” Gillespie’s tweet read.

Jason Gillespie has played a key role in the resurgence of Ishant Sharma

 Sharma, for the major part of his first eight years, was often termed as ‘unlucky’ for his failure to get the desired knicks even as he defeated the batsmen’ bat on a regular basis.

Ishant was often accused of bowling too short or not having enough pace in his fullish length deliveries. And, it was his stint with Gillespie in the county circuit that paved way for his resurgence.

“A lot of people would tell me that I need to increase the pace of my fuller deliveries. No one told me how to do that? It was when I went to play county cricket, Jason Gillespie gave me the solution,” said Ishant as quoted by Outlook.

“Gillespie told me that in order to increase the pace in fuller deliveries, you don’t just release it but hit the deck so that it should target the knee roll,” he said. 

And, Ishant’s resurgence has been clearly apparent. Since the start of 2015, Sharma has claimed 110 wickets in 67 innings at an average of 23.96 with the help of five 5-wicket hauls.

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