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IPL 2025 LIVE Cricket Score, GT vs MI LIVE Score: Siraj scrambles and shocks

For a man who was hit for two successive fours, the comeback would have tasted sweet for Mohammad Siraj not just for the result, but in the manner it came. He had strayed twice in a row and Rohit Sharma duly put it away for leg-side boundaries. Then came the payback ball; it was the wobble-ball, the scrambled seam, that pitched on a length outside off and jagged back in sharply. Rohit’s foot was frozen, and he was stunned by the extent of the inward movement and was cut in half as the ball took out the bail.

It was in 2021 on a tour of England that he picked up the new wobble toy from Bharat Arun, the bowling coach. Up the slope at Lord’s, it would scramble across, and then cut away repeatedly. R Ashwin raved at the “fast off breaks”. An equally excited Sachin Tendulkar was moved enough to tweet a video explainer about it. He showed how Siraj cuts his fingers at release for the in-cutter to yank the shape of the ball and send it tilting all scrambled towards the batsmen. The admiration in Tendulkar’s eyes told a story of its own. The shock in Rohit’s eyes on Saturday night, told another story.

- Sriram Veera

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