Meet Shabnam Shakil — the smiling assassin who is here to stay
The 16yearold becomes the youngest player in the history of the Women’s Premier League; her first wicket in the tournament comes in the match against Mumbai Indians as she takes out SciverBrunt with a 102.9 kmph delivery
hen a team has lost four league games in a row and has become a sort of punching bag for others to stamp a win and move forward, it’s easy to brush it aside, to dismiss it. Ask Gujarat Giants in the Women’s Premier League. The side finished the Bengaluru leg without a win, with critics happy to chide the side for being a bit too attached to the base of the standings.
However, a venue change brought a change of fortunes and with it, a fresh bunch of heroes who have gone on to transform the morale of the side. One such character is 16yearold pacer Shabnam Shakil. The first thing anyone will tell you about the cheerful teenager is just how there’s always a smile on her face. After warming the bench last season, she made her WPL debut in the New Delhi leg of the ongoing edition, against Royal Challengers Bangalore, making her the youngest debutant in the league’s short history. While she went wicketless and conceded a fair number of runs in that match, her control of line and length, smart use of variations and ability to bowl to the stumps made everyone sit up and take notice.
Shabnam kept her place in the playing XI for Giants’ next fixture against Mumbai Indians. Her economy rate continued to be a work in progress but she bagged her maiden WPL wicket, taking out Nat SciverBrunt with a 102.9 kmph delivery.
Ahead of Giants’ penultimate league game – against UP Warriorz – coach Michael Klinger’s brainstorming session with team analyst Saurabh Walker led to a slight change in Shabnam’s place in the bowling order.
“Beth (Mooney) told me ahead of time that I was getting the new ball and that was a big boost for me because there’s no better opportunity for me to showcase my strengths,” Shabnam beamed after the game. She wasn’t wrong. In four overs, she bowled 19 dot balls and took three key wickets. She dismissed Alyssa Healy, Chamari Athapaththu in her first over and then dismissed her U19 teammate Shweta Sehrawat in the seventh over to leave the Warriorz reeling. Take a wild guess which one of these wickets was her favourite.
“Healy was on my wishlist and I thought about Athapaththu while coming to the game in the bus, but I don’t think I enjoyed anyone’s wicket the way I enjoyed Shweta’s. I’ve played with her so much and knew her game inside out and so that was fun,” she gushed in a postmatch chat with Mannat Kashyap. Incidentally, in 2022, when India U19 was to take on New Zealand’s in a T20 series, Shabnam had her eyes on the technically sound Shweta, who was captaining the Indian side, then too. “Iska main wicket nikalke rahungi (I will dismiss her somehow),” she had declared then.
Shabnam’s love for the game is a family heirloom. “I got into cricket because of my dad. My mother hates cricket because it takes up a big chunk of his day and mindspace. I took the game up as a physical activity to stay healthy,”
Shabnam told The Hindu.
“I started off as a batter and would just go and get a hit but when I picked up the ball, I realised that the emotion I felt with the ball in hand was just something else.”
Shabnam’s ability to clock speeds upwards of 110 is no fluke. Speed is probably the only thing this young bowler, who has grown in the game following the exploits of the likes of Jasprit Bumrah and Brett Lee, thinks about.
“When I first started bowling, line and length and other factors were all secondary. The only thing that mattered to me was pace. Funnily enough, my father was also a pacer and I wanted to get past his speed. Now Shabnim’s
(Ismail) record (the top speed record in women’s cricket — 132.1 kmph) is what I want to break at some point,” she adds, with a sparkle in her eyes,” she quipped.
Shabnam’s approach is not unidimensional though. Klinger hails her ability to be a sponge in the dressing room, ever ready to take feedback on her technique and form. “She is a bit different as well. She swings the ball in not a lot of quick bowlers do that. She is going to develop the slower ball – we will work on her for the next 12 months – which is going to make her stronger. She can bowl crossseam as well which, on wickets that have been variable, comes into play. Her maturity is beyond her age, and she has got the work ethic. She is only going to get stronger and fitter over time as well, and that’s going to help. Whether she did well or not in the last couple of games, I honestly don’t mind because if the girls
Wwork as hard as someone like Shabnam, you want to give them opportunities, and she got that in the last couple of games,” Klinger said about Shabnam’s matchwinning effort against the
Warriorz.
A few years ago, the bouncer was Shabnam’s stock ball and her stump to stump bowling brought dividends in the domestic setup for Andhra and which eventually got her a look in for the U19 side and eventually in India’s side that won the inaugural U19 T20 World Cup.
Shabnam bowled the first delivery of that World Cup but had a poor tournament. “While playing in the World Cup, I was the youngest in the team in South Africa. The crowd there really got to me. It made me nervous. I wasn’t able to express my strengths to my full capacity. That was something I consciously worked on in the WPL. At the U19 level, it’s understandable if you’ve seen daunting crowds for the first time and felt nerves. But that shouldn’t happen in the WPL. Even if crowds are there, it shouldn’t stop me from expressing myself. So the idea was to simplify things in my head,” she revealed.
Klinger agreed when asked what the team was telling Shabnam in the nets.
“We’re just trying to keep things simple rather than overcomplicating things too much. We’re just asking her to bowl to the stumps. She’s got swing, she’s got decent pace. She’s 16 and she’s only going to get quicker,” he said.
Shabnam has the cushion of having her India under19 coach Nooshin Al Khadeer overseeing her growth in the Giants set up too. She also has help working on her variations from Ashleigh Gardner, Sneh Rana and others. “I am still working on my skill on my run up and loading. I focussed a lot of yorkers because it’s a handy tool in the middle and death overs. I can see the benefit and utility of it as I execute. I worked on my batting too and I hope I get a chance to bat a bit more,” Shabnam added sheepishly.