WPL 2024: Meet Shabnam Shakil – Gujarat Giants’ teenage pace assassin who’s here to stay

When 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 16-year-old pacer Shabnam Shakil. 

MAKING IT COUNT

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 Sciver-Brunt with a 102.9 kmph delivery. 

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Ahead of Giants’ penultimate league game – against UP Warriorz – Giants’ 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, and 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 wicket. I’ve played with her so much and knew her game inside out and so that was fun,” she gushed in a post-match chat with Mannat Kashyap.

Incidentally, last year, when India U-19 was to take on New Zealand 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. 

SPEED THRILLS BUT IT ISN’T EVERYTHING

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 tells Sportstar. 

“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 Shabnam’s (Ismail) record is what I want to break at some point,” she adds, with a sparkle in her eyes,” she quips. 

Shabnam’s approach is not unidimensional though. Coach 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 cross-seam 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 work 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 match-winning 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 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 her 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 reveals. 

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 U19 coach Nooshin Al Khadeer overseeing her growth in the Giants setup too. She also has help working on her variations from Ashleigh Gardner, Sneh Rana and others.

ALSO READ | WPL 2024: How Harmanpreet Kaur is giving Indian women’s cricket its dose of power hitting

“I am still working on my skill – on my run up and loading. I focussed a lot on 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. 

Shabnam did get a chance to bat but was run out in trying to save her skipper in the game against UP Warriorz. Unremarkable, you may think, but this run out directly impacted Giants’ eventual margin of victory. 

“I don’t know if you guys picked this up but Shabnam with the bat went and sacrificed her wicket in a move that brought Beth back on strike and she went on to hit two fours which ultimately made all the difference,” Klinger pointed out. 

TOUGH LESSONS

Shabnam has been lucky to have a safety net in her father, constantly backing Mohammed Shakil, a Navy official. When her coaches recommended ice baths for better recovery, Shabnam’s father got the setup done at home. He would take her to tournaments and practice and constantly be her sounding board.

Shabnam also had help from an understanding teaching network in her school in Visakhapatnam. Her teachers in Siva Sivani Public School were happy to give her all the help she needed to balance her boards and cricket. 

Wrapped up in cotton wool on this front, failure stung Shabnam more than it needed to in the early days. 

“There was a point early on when I was not able to break out from the district to state level. I knew so many players who quit the game because they were not able to progress to the next level. I remember crying to my dad once about not making the state level. He asked me, “Do you want to play for the state more or for India?” I replied saying I can play for India only if I first manage to break into the state level. He then said, “Only if you aim for India will you even get better enough to play for state.” That triggered a lot of focussed work into getting better and moving to higher levels of the game.”

“This was around the lockdown time too. I wasn’t this built and my height was also not here yet. As a pacer I needed to work on improving my height. I worked a lot on my physical strength. Along with age, my muscle strength and mass also improved. After the lockdown, when I went back to the district team, my teammates could not recognise me. Soon after, I got picked for the ZCA camp. It is there that I met Nooshin ma’am, who I eventually worked with during the U19 World Cup too. I also eventually made it to the NCA high performance camp. We were groomed really well. Our basics were reviewed and fitness priorities were set,” she explains. 

The player we see today, whose smile never fades, had phases when she would break down in the dressing room if things didn’t go well. 

“There was a time when, if I didn’t bowl properly, I’d come back to the room and cry. I have cried on the field also so many times. I have come to realise that crying won’t change anything, so why not just smile? The only things we always have in our control are our breathing and our thoughts. So if our thoughts are positive, our emotions will go the same way. In searching for success, failure is bound to come. The important bit is to never stop learning,” she admits. 

THE ROAD AHEAD FOR SHABNAM

Shabnam never watched a women’s international fixture in the stadium growing up. Games never happened in Vizag. Instead, she and her dad would catch all the updates on TV. He would point to Jhulan Goswami bowling and say, “You need to be like her.”

Cut to 2024 and before she even needed to muster the courage to meet her idol, Jhulan walked up to her and gave her a pat on the back for a job well done. With an impressive list of elite players already in her wicket kitty, Shabnam has an Arya Stark like vibe to her when she doles out Meg Lanning, Harmanpreet Kaur, Tahlia McGrath and Shafali Verma as the other members on her list. 

With her attitude, readiness to go to any extent for her team and a smile in the hardest of situations, an exciting career filled with the choicest scalps awaits this feisty teenager from Andhra. Grab your popcorn and enjoy the ride!