CHENNAI: There’s a touch of IM Vijayan in him. Just as the wizard of Indian football struggled to analyse how he came up with such mesmerising skills on the field, Mohammed Asif, too, doesn’t know how he bowls those magic deliveries time and again, match after match.

“Kaise karta hoon pata nahin (I don’t know how I do it),” he told Times of India with a shy smile, only to add, “All I know is that I can bowl those magic deliveries every match.”

The best thing is to keep it there, and still, the bait of trying to go a little deeper into this art of bowling magic deliveries that has made him the best upcoming pace bowler in the business, is unavoidable.

When pressed a little further, Asif said, “As I was growing up and started playing with the leather ball, somebody told me, ‘Just hit the seam’. It got into my head and all I do is try and hit the seam every delivery I bowl,” Asif explained.

It’s his ability to hit the seam so frequently and bowl in the corridor of uncertainty that made the pundits dub Asif as the next Glenn McGrath. Now, the boy from Sheikhpura is playing alongside the Aussie legend in the Delhi Daredevils team in the IPL.

How does it all feel? “Even when I was being compared to McGrath at the beginning of my career, I never felt any pressure. I always felt proud to be compared with such a great man, and now its a privilege opening the bowling with him,” Asif said.

He knows fully well that he will only grow as a bowler working with the Aussie. “Even in the last game, he just came upto me and told a few things. I adjusted my bowling accordingly and it immediately paid dividends,” the 25-year old paceman said.

Even as he enjoys his IPL stint for Delhi team, Asif knows that there’s nothing in T20 that can enthuse a bowler. “The boundaries are small, the wickets are flat, thereís just no scope for experimentation... All a pace bowler can do is vary his pace a bit to contain the batsmen,” Asif rued.

Doesn’t he feel that if a bowler like him goes on playing so much T20, he may lose his attacking instincts after a point of time? “There’s that possibility. But this game provides you with good money and a good life,” comes the honest confession from the lanky paceman.

He only hopes that Test cricket will survive to let him be the bowler that he is. “If Test cricket doesn’t lose its stature, we, bowlers, will have something to live for,” Asif quipped.

The conversation veered to the doping allegations and his famous spat with Shoaib Akhtar, which robbed Asif of one precious year of international cricket.

“I’m not that kind of a bowler who needs steroids to increase pace. I’m telling you the truth, I never took any banned medicine knowingly. And neither did I provoke Shoaib for him to hit out at me,” Asif pleaded innocence.