His first step was pitiless self-assessment. At the end of the exercise, he realised two things: One, he had allowed himself to run to seed, and had become horribly unfit for an international sportsman; two, his lazy attitude to practice had led him to develop certain bad habits with the ball, that was preventing him from making full use of his range.
The solution he identified for himself was cricket: as much of it as he could get, wherever he could get it.
The Indian domestic season was on, so he turned out for his Ranji team, Baroda, and performed prodigies. An interesting sidelight was the resumption of a battle he had been fighting with his former captain, and one of his vocal supporters, Sourav Ganguly, who at the time was similarly out of the Indian squad, and looking to regain form at the domestic level.
That little battle had its genesis in the 2005 edition of the Duleep Trophy, when Zaheer in both innings took out Ganguly with inswingers, one going through the gate to bowl him, the second crashing into his pads.
A year later, the two met again, when Ganguly turned out for Northamptonshire against a Worcestershire attacked led by Zaheer. Yet again, Zaheer found that gate between Ganguly's bat and pad, with a pitched up inswinger that moved late and crashed through Ganguly's defenses.
On February 3, 2007, Ganguly walked out to bat with Bengal's fortunes in his hands; the batting side had been reduced to 28/2 and was looking to its star player to revive its fortunes.
That hope died stillborn, as Zaheer, yet again, produced that late inswinger, to clip the inside of Ganguly's bat and crash into the stumps.
Image: Zaheer in action during the final match for the N K P Salve Challenger Trophy between the India Blues and India Reds at the Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai, October 4, 2006.
India in the United Kingdom 2007
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