Javagal Srinath, S Sreesanth, Ishant Sharma, Varun Aaron… now Mohammed Shami

India’s Test history is littered with painful episodes of their batsmen being bloodied and wounded by an opposition fast bowler. But at Old Trafford in 2014 it was payback time as Varun Aaron left Stuart Broad with a broken nose and two black eyes with a nasty bouncer. Broad needed surgery to fix the nose, but he later suffered from nightmares and even lost his batting confidence. “Even when I get tired I see balls flying at me. My jaw clicks from it and if I have two glasses of wine I have black eyes,” is how Broad described it.

Sreesanth has Kallis on the hop

This wasn’t any batsman. This was Jacques Kallis, who reacted like he’d been shot, when Sreesanth not only got the ball to rear up but also curl in alarmingly at his face during a famous Test win at Durban in 2010. “A spitting cobra” is how Ravi Shastri described the delivery on commentary and it’s safe to say that Kallis did feel the sting. Sreesanth would later credit Sachin Tendulkar to have been constantly in his ear from mid-on, egging him on to be aggressive.

Srinath ends Lanka’s career

Lanka de Silva was a young Sri Lanka wicket-keeper playing in only his third Test when Javagal Srinath ended his career prematurely by producing a screamer that smashed into the diminutive batsman’s left cheek. It took almost a year for him to get back to cricket, and he never played for Sri Lanka again. What makes this bouncer even more special was that this was among the flattest Test wickets you would ever find at Wankhede Stadium with India having posted 512.

Ishant bounces out Clarke

It takes quite something for an Indian fast bowler to bounce an Australian batsman out, that too on a flat Indian wicket. But that’s what Ishant Sharma achieved when he got Michael Clarke ducking, with his eyes shut, head turned away from the ball and hands haplessly covering his face, before gloving behind in 2010. Incidentally, it was in Mohali.