> “People perhaps enjoy looking and passing comments more. They say the rhythm isn’t there, that he doesn’t look fit, or whatever else. It doesn’t bother me. I’m on the ground, I’m playing.”
Mohammed Shami said that on Sunday in Kalyani, minutes after taking 4 for 30 against Delhi in Bengal’s Ranji Trophy opener, according to the Times of India. He was responding to the question that has followed him for two years: why isn’t he in India’s T20I side anymore? Hours earlier, the same reporters had watched him help bowl Delhi out for 240 on the opening day of the 2026-27 season. His answer came with a smile. The timing was the point.
The latest Mohammed Shami snub arrived on October 6, when the BCCI’s senior selection committee named India’s T20I squad for the New Zealand tour. Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 36, was recalled after nearly four years away. Shami, also 36, was not in the squad. The contrast was impossible to miss. Until last week, as NDTV put it, the two veterans were in the same boat: out of the team despite consistent domestic performances. One got a seat. The other got the questions.
## A week of two fast bowlers
The story of this snub unfolded in three acts, and Shami starred in all of them.
On October 10, Shami spoke to RevSportz about the New Zealand squad. “Bhuvneshwar Kumar got the chance to play for India, and that’s good for him,” he said, as quoted by NDTV. “But his selection doesn’t concern me. Wherever I get the chance to play, I will give my best. Right now, my focus is firmly on this Ranji match.” Then the line that made headlines: “The same thing has been happening with me for the last two or three years. I have been performing and have proved my fitness for Bengal. If I don’t get the chance to play for India again, it’s not my loss.”
On October 11, he backed every word of it at Kalyani. Bengal bowled Delhi out for 240 on day one of the Ranji Trophy season, and Shami’s 4 for 30 led the attack. The Hindustan Times’ Ranji blog adds the detail that makes it sweeter. On that same opening day, the big batting names all failed: KL Rahul made 4, Yashasvi Jaiswal 0, Sarfaraz Khan 1, Karun Nair 8. The veteran with the supposedly missing rhythm was the one who did his job.
On October 12, the Times of India carried his press-conference response to the selection debate: “I have stopped making such comments. It makes no difference to me. Now, whoever wants to do whatever, let them. My job is just to play.” Short. Final. The words of a man who has decided the argument is over.
## What the Mohammed Shami snub tells us
Here is what the selectors’ arithmetic looks like. Bhuvneshwar’s recall was earned, not gifted. As CricTracker reported via Dailyhunt, he took 28 wickets in IPL 2026, finishing second on the wicket-takers’ chart. His last India appearance came in November 2022 against New Zealand. Four years out, one strong IPL, back in the T20I squad at 36. The message is plain: the selectors still value recent T20-specific form, even from veterans.
That is also where the argument for Shami stops being sentimental and starts being a question worth asking. Shami’s last India game was an ODI in March 2025, which is considerably more recent than Bhuvneshwar’s November 2022. He played important roles in the 2023 World Cup and the 2025 Champions Trophy, according to NDTV. Former India batter Wasim Jaffer has publicly wondered why neither Shami nor Mohammed Siraj is getting game time. When your case needs no advocacy beyond your own scorecards, the selection room’s silence gets loud.
Still, it would be dishonest to pretend there is no cricketing logic here. India has spent the last two years building a T20 side around younger pace options, and Shami’s red-ball-first reputation has always worked against him in the shortest format. The selectors are not picking a bowler for the past. They are picking for New Zealand conditions in a few weeks’ time. One can disagree with that call while admitting it is a call, not a conspiracy. Meanwhile, the current T20I side has its own business to finish, leading West Indies 2-1 in a five-match series with the fourth game in Hyderabad on October 14.
And this is the part nobody in the outrage cycle wants to say out loud: Indian cricket has a habit of treating its 35-plus fast bowlers as solved problems, right up until it needs one. Swing bowlers age like spinners in subcontinental memory. They are written off at 34, recalled at 36, and celebrated at 38 when the younger attack leaks runs on a seaming track. Shami knows this story by heart. His calm is not surrender. It is the patience of a man who has seen the cycle turn before.
If Bhuvneshwar struggles against New Zealand’s top order, the same selectors will find Shami’s name on the table again before the month ends, attached to a 4 for 30 from Kalyani and a quote that said “it’s not my loss.” The ball, as he put it, is in his hands. He keeps throwing it.