Mohammed Shami names Ravi Shastri the best coach he has played under

Mohammed Shami names Ravi Shastri the best coach he has played under (Photo Source: BCCI)

Indian fast-bowler Mohammed Shami has named Ravi Shastri as the best coach he has played under when asked to choose between coaches he has played under.

Shami acknowledged the time he had spent under coaches Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble and Gautam Gambhir but singled out Shastri for the freedom he gave to the players and the aggressive mindset he instilled within the squad.

“It’s a bit difficult to compare, I haven’t played much under Gauti [Gautam Gambhir] bhai. I’ve spent a good amount of time with Rahul [Dravid] bhai and Anil [Kumble] bhai. But if I have to choose one out of these four, I would choose Ravi [Shastri] bhai. Because of that freedom, that aggression you see in a player when they go out to fight and play a match, you can see that from the outside [with his coaching],” Shami was quoted as saying by Times Now Navbharat.

Shami, who made his debut in 2013, put up a brilliant showing in the 2023 ODI World Cup in India, where he picked up 24 wickets in seven matches, the most by an individual in a single edition. Despite his performances, India lost out to Australia in the final. The seam bowler stated that despite the records, losing the final remains the biggest regret in his career.

“This thing is printed in my mind like a picture because there is only one regret in my mind, that we should have won the final, that’s it. These [records] don’t matter to me at all. But yes, sometimes I feel that when I look at the whole picture of the World Cups, or sometimes when a reel or a list comes up in front of me showing ‘he played this many matches, took this many wickets,’ then the matches I missed in ICC events come to my mind.

“That picture is always in my mind that, man, I missed three, four, or five matches every year in every event, if you look at the World Cup. So I was thinking, man, if I had played these, I would be sitting right at the very top. Sometimes it just feels like that,” Shami said.

Shami last played for India in an ODI in 2025 in the final of the Champions Trophy in Dubai against New Zealand and made his last appearance in Test whites in the 2023 ICC World Test Championship Final against Australia at the Oval.

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