Tendulkar has never told me to bowl full: Ishant Sharma

The lanky fast bowler doesn’t want to consider himself unlucky for not getting wickets and will like to strive hard rather than sulk.

Yahoo! Cricket – Thu 26 Jan, 2012 9:38 AM IST

Adelaide (The Telegraph): Ishant Sharma has been toiling hard in Australia for the past one month but strangely he has hardly anything to write home about.Ishant Sharma bowls on day one of the third Test match at the WACA ground. (TONY ASHBY/AFP/Getty Images)

The lanky fast bowler, however, doesn’t want to consider himself unlucky for not getting wickets and will like to strive hard rather than sulk.

“Am I the unluckiest bowler? You can’t say that. Cricket is a funny game. You never know what’s going to happen next. All you can do is to hope for the best,” Ishant, who went wicketless for 100 runs during his 30-over spell, said.

“Fast bowling is a tough job. When you are bowling on flat tracks in India and you hardly get anything, you still carry on because bowling for your country is a big motivation. That remains the most important thing for me,” he said.

Ishant said Sachin Tendulkar has never told him to bowl full. “He doesn’t tell me to bowl full… He knows it’s not my natural style. He tells me to stick to my natural style… just a little bit of swing because conditions are helpful to swing bowling. He says ‘if you can swing, you have better chance to get them out’.”

Ishant feels that there are times when he comes in as one-change, it’s a semi-new ball and it doesn’t swing as much as expected.

“Sometimes, when I bowl as one change, the ball does not do much. In those times, you need to be patient and keep bowling in the right areas.”

The erratic show by Indian seamers has also brought the role of bowling coach Eric Simons under scanner but Ishant defended Simons.

“Simons is a good coach and I am getting along well with him. We share a good rapport… We talk a lot about bowling. He doesn’t want me to change my bowling style. You never know… had I changed my bowling action I might have been dropped like I was once. We don’t want that to happen.”

Ishant also defended his team’s bowling effort.

“Except Perth, we have bowled well. Here, even in Adelaide, we bowled well. It’s just that luck is not with us. We are bowling in the right areas. Hopefully luck will favour us.”

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