When Mohit Sharma joined the Indian team, on the back of his IPL success, he was a bowler who ran in hard, moved the ball but wasn’t quick.

Back in the day, he bowled alongside Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis. Before becoming UAE’s head coach, Aaqib Javed was credited with grooming the speed demon Shoaib Akhtar. So his unadulterated applause for Indian pacers consistently clocking in the 140-145 kph range will sound odd. But Aaqib has his reasons to declare he’s a fan of India’s pace bowling unit that is making heads turn at this World Cup.

After two games, Mohammad Shami, Umesh Yadav and Mohit Sharma have taken 12 wickets, nine of them by bowling short. The last of those men, he is particularly impressed with, even seeing a likeness in Mohit Sharma’s bowling with his own.

“I am really, really surprised by the Indian bowlers. These are brave bowlers as they are not scared of banging it short and challenging the South African batsmen. People were talking about Australia, New Zealand and South Africa but now they have to consider India as a threat. India should be really proud of their bowling effort,” says Aaqib, who has the tough task of preparing his batsmen to face these pacers at WACA on Saturday.

Aaqib thinks hard before singling out Mohit Sharma, the team’s first change bowler — the 26-year-old who replaced the injured Ishant Sharma at the 11th hour in the World Cup — for making a difference to the attack and giving Indian bowling a nice menace-tinged image makeover.

“After a few medium fast deliveries, he has this surprise heavy ball that gives him the wicket,” he says. That’s straight out of the India vs South Africa at Melbourne on Sunday. Hashim Amla underestimated the not-so-tall and not-so-fast pacer, a folly that saw him get out to the Sharma effort ball.

The Faridabad boy’s rise from the not-too-glamorous Ranji Trophy side Haryana, that plays most of its cricket at an obscure venue in the middle of fields, to the national side is a feel-good-story. Besides the deeply committed cricketer, this tale features a middle-class household of supportive parents, a coach with a sharp eye, unenvious team mates, a reliable support system and a career-changing tip by Duncan Fletcher. First, the tip.

When Sharma joined the Indian team, on the back of his IPL success, he was a bowler who ran in hard, moved the ball but wasn’t quick. Fletcher after observing the rookie minutely suggested a technical tweak. Sharma followed the advice; he would get 10kph quicker, cross 140 kph consistently and beat the batsmen more often. It was MS Dhoni, insiders say, who shared this trivia with board officials when Fletcher was being appraised and his contract was about to expire.

Even when he wasn’t that quick or skilful, Sharma had his backers. Haryana coach Ashwani Kumar talks about how it’s easy for tall bowlers to get bounce from good length, but Mohit’s frame (5’11”) is deviously deceptive. “He has a small frame but his strong shoulders ensure he can do what tall bowlers manage naturally. And batsmen don’t realise it. By the time teams realise it, the World Cup will be over,” he chortles.

The aggressive bowler is aided in his effort by the use of two-new-ball rule. For a bowler like him, he needs a ball that lands on the seam. Just the one ball meant other bowlers spoilt the seam. Now he doesn’t need to share it with others.

In a meeting with HCA chief Anirudh Chaudhary three years ago where he went in with his observations about the cricketers, Ashwani Kumar, recalls, “He wasn’t there in the Ranji squad but there was one quality that you noticed in him. I wrote in my report that just for his sheer dedication, he will play India in the future. I even remember the date, it was September 22, 2012.”

With his father working for manufacturing major Escort and mother a housewife, it was Sharma’s commitment to what he did that persuaded the parents to let him chase his dreams. Rising from the ranks in Haryana, he would spend half the year at the hostel in Lahli, cricket’s back-of-beyond, where Haryana play their home games or at Jim Corbett National Park, where at a cricket ground in the middle of a jungle reserve they have their pre-season camps.

“Corbett is in Nainital district so you can imagine there will be lots of moisture around, the conditions are conducive for pace bowling. Lahli has one of the fastest pitches in the country. and Lessons learnt bowling on these tracks helped Mohit when he bowled abroad,” says the coach. Ashwani also adds that since both Lahli and Corbett are cricket islands that are totally cut off from distractions, Sharma is totally focused on his game.

The last man to claim Tendulkar’s wicket in domestic first-class cricket during the swansong sojourn at Lahli, Sharma also bagged last IPL season’s Purple Cap in the lead-up to the World Cup.

In the short period that Sharma has been with the Indian team, he has built a reputation of someone who keeps to his corner but is always ready to help a team-mate, be it in giving throwdowns to a struggling batsman or standing behind stumps for a fellow bowler in his extra training.

The Haryana Cricket Association’s Chaudhary says that it’s this quality that makes him very popular among team-mates. “Whenever the papers praise him, I get text messages from Sharma’s Haryana team-mates to check the article. Not many people have such popularity,” he says.

So while the Indian pacers were running through Pakistan and South Africa, he was the one with the broadest smile. Happy for himself, happy for others. For India this is a happy situation. The last time a pace trio made such an impact at a World Cup was in 2003. Javagal Srinath, Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra blew the opposition and helped India storm to the final. More than a decade later, once again at a World Cup, Sharma and his fast friends are denting helmets and turning heads.