After a well-oiled performance in the IPL
this year, Mohammed Shami is going into India’s Test series against Australia “without
any pressure”, PTI reported.

Shami in IPL 2020 arguably had one of
the best IPL seasons of his career, as apart from taking 20 wickets, him defending
5 runs in a last-ditch phase in a match against Mumbai Indians became a turning
point of the match as well as one of the highlights of the tournament.

“My performance for KXIP in IPL has
given me a lot of confidence and put me in the right zone,” PTI quoted Shami as
saying in an interview with BCCI.TV on Saturday.

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 He
also made it clear that his area of focus will be the Test series as he got into
the training session over the last week.

“We are going to have a long tour starting
with the white ball followed by pink and red ball tests. My focus area has been
the red ball and I am working on my lengths and seam movement,” the Indian
pacer explained.

Further defining the difference in
format between IPL and test cricket, Shami pointed out that due to the recently
finished IPL, his white-ball tendencies are still in control and as a result it
is taking him more time getting adapted to the red ball.

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“You don’t bowl in the same area since
both formats are different but your basics don’t change much”, he further stressed.

The Australia squad about to take India head-on
has Steve Smith and David Warner who were missing during India’s series win in
2018. This is likely to make things harder for the Indian pace battery,
consisting of Shami, Umesh Yadav and Jasprit Bumrah, but Shami does not seem
perturbed by it.

“If you look at the numbers, we have
managed to pick 20 wickets almost on all our away tours,” he says.