"Patience," says Zaheer Khan in a soft tone, "is the essence." He is discussing the furious art of fast bowling, and the physical damage it inflicts on a practitioner. This is the lesson Zaheer has culled after eight years of international cricket and a career curbed by injuries. And you need patience if you have a bowling style resembling Zaheer's.

When he leaps high in the air and lands on his left foot, Zaheer uncorks a potentially rebellious storm in his body. His left foot experiences pressure equalling six times his body weight; a force ten times his weight rages through his pelvic joints when he flings his shoulders to release the ball from his left hand. He's painfully aware of, and resigned to, the affinity between fast bowling and injuries. "When you bowl fast, you know you are going to get injured at some point of time," Zaheer told Outlook. "You know that you have to sometimes play through pain, sometimes stay away from the game and work hard to get back."

Zaheer has had to do that quite a bit, right from his early days in top-flight cricket. Since he made his debut as a 22-year-old against Bangladesh in November 2000, India have played 88 Tests. Zaheer has missed 32 of them, mostly due to injuries. Heartbreakingly, he's broken down at the edge of historic opportunities. On the 2003 tour of Australia, after taking five wickets in the first innings of the first Test, he pulled a hamstring while bowling in the second and had negligible influence in the only other Test he played, losing the chance to bowl on pitches deemed a fast bowler's paradise. A year later, on the Pakistan tour, he was out again after the first Test—this time with a pulled hamstring muscle. There was every danger that Zaheer was going to be lost to Indian cricket. Something needed to be done.

"Those were very difficult times for me," Zaheer recalls now. "I had been unfit, I had put on weight...and after all those injuries, it was clear I had to make changes to my run-up." The school of change was the MRF Pace Academy in Chennai. Former Australian fast bowling great Dennis Lillee, the resident deity at the academy, pointed out that Zaheer was leaping too high before delivering the ball, a consequence of the lack of rhythm in his run-up. To find optimum delivery position at the crease, he was jumping high, almost up to two feet. And so, for the sake of longevity, his run-up was shortened.

Meanwhile, to add serious insult to his injuries, the emergence of S. Sreesanth and R.P. Singh put him in the shade. Zaheer was no longer the premier Indian paceman. "I focus on things that are in my control, and that's what I did then," says Zaheer. And what was in his control was to become accustomed to the changed action. For that he needed to bowl hundreds of overs, in the nets and matches, which he did at Worcestershire in 2006, taking 78 wickets, and earning a recall to the Indian team.

When the Indian cricket board announced its central contracts last June, Zaheer was put into Grade C. That was incompatible with his talent, and Zaheer swiftly corrected it. In the second Test against England, stung by a juvenile joke by the home players, Zaheer bagged wickets with accurate, lethal swing of the ball. He drew the batsmen out with outswingers, then pinned them back with those darting in, treating them more or less like spare parts at the end of the pitch. With 18 wickets, Zaheer was the Man of the Series. He was back as the spearhead, and back in Grade A of Indian contracted players.

But, in December later that year, the pain was back too. An ankle injury he picked up batting in the odi series in England revisited him with alarming frequency. He missed the third Test against Pakistan at Bangalore. He played in the first Test against Australia at Melbourne later that month, but missed the next three Tests of a stirring series. It was a cruel blow, for Zaheer has been far more successful away from home—he's taken 42 wickets from 18 Tests in India, and 136 from 38 abroad.

Most of this year, Zaheer has been a reluctant, though earnest, convalescent. "I've spent time at the Centre for Sports Medicine in Johannesburg," says Zaheer. "I've been working not only on injuries, but also on muscle-strengthening exercises to avoid them. But you have to be very patient, you have to focus hard."

Zaheer was back at his best in Sri Lanka last month. He sent down a tremor of thrill down the viewer's spine with almost unplayable, unpredictable swing bowling. He took eight wickets in three Tests, not a fair reflection of his bowling, yet the most by a fast bowler in the series. In the one-dayers, his bowling proved vital for the series win. "It was very satisfying, especially as I got better through the tour, as I got my rhythm," Zaheer says.

Wasim Akram, the original left-arm swing master, believes Zaheer is back at his best. "He's using his brain very well, he's using his experience," Akram told Outlook. "It's very difficult to come back from injuries, and he's done it so many times. He's lean and fit, he's swinging the ball both ways, he's got greater variety than before." Adds India bowling coach Venkatesh Prasad, "He's developed a lovely outswinger against the right-handers. All credit to him, for he's been a fantastic student of the game. His grip of the ball, and the seam position at the time of the delivery, are excellent, and that's what gives him such control. He knows his responsibilities, he's been working hard on his fitness."

Just short of his 30th birthday, the fruits of Zaheer's maturity has blended into a heady concoction, bringing a ripening conclusion to the promise of the summer of 2000, in the icc Knockout Trophy in Kenya. Every rhythmic run to the wicket presages a delivery that threatens to despatch hapless batsmen. With his history, fears of injury are a breathing presence, but an equally insistent iron will and patience have helped him overcome each seemingly insuperable obstacle.