The Duleep Trophy later this month will be more than just another domestic tournament. For India’s selectors, it is a final chance to lock in the squad for the T20 Asia Cup.
Most of the country’s leading players are expected to feature. Yet the inclusion of 34-year-old Mohammed Shami in the East Zone squad has already drawn attention.
Shami’s career over the past few years has been uneven. He was on Bengal’s list of probables for the season but skipped the ongoing training camp in Kolkata. Even so, Bengal team management believes he could still turn out this season.
“Shami is doing everything to get ready for the season,” a team source told The Times of India.
His absence from India’s Test squad against England earlier this year was due to fresh injury concerns. Selection committee chairman Ajit Agarkar confirmed that MRI scans had revealed new issues, leading the BCCI medical team to declare him unfit for the entire tour. Shami last played a Test in June 2023 and has 229 wickets in 64 matches at an average of 27.71.
The Asia Cup will be in T20 format, and that brings its own challenges. Shami’s IPL 2025 stint with Sunrisers Hyderabad was underwhelming: just six wickets in nine games, an economy rate of 11.23. That followed ankle surgery and knee troubles that kept him out for months.
His re-entry into the competitive circuit was staged during the 2024-25 domestic season, although the brevity of T20 innings has historically masked his potency. Across the format, 27 wickets at an economy of 8.95 testify to a career where over-runs dilute the strike-rate dividends.
Since his 2013 debut, Shami has hardened into an ODI cornerstone, amassing 116 wickets over 64 contests. The Champions Trophy of the current season marked his last sortie, where nine dismissals over five fixtures arrived at a commendably tight 5.68 runs per over.
With the Asia Cup on the immediate horizon, the selectors face a binary calculus: whether veteran composure can eclipse the recent dip in cadence. The Duleep Trophy, then, assumes a fresh gravity; Shami confronts a narrowing temporal aperture to recalibrate the argument in his favour.
