BEIJING — With five defenders smothering him at the top of the penalty box, Didier Drogba, the former star player for Chelsea in England’s Premier League, calmly slid a lead pass to his new Shanghai Shenhua teammate Cao Yunding, who was dashing full-speed through the box. The nifty pass caught the defenders and the goalkeeper off guard. With a near-open net, Drogba’s teammate hesitated, perhaps perplexed by how easy it had seemed, then fired the ball past the dumbstruck goalkeeper.

Just weeks after scoring the equalizing goal and converting the game-winning penalty kick for Chelsea in the Champions League final, Drogba made an unconventional move by signing with Shanghai Shenhua, a middling club in the scandal-ridden China Super League.

Since his first match for Shanghai on July 22, Drogba, who is originally from Ivory Coast, has quickly emerged as a sensation here. He is tied for most goals on his club — despite having played a third of the games of the player with whom he is tied — and he has drawn record crowds of nearly 25,000 fans — up from an average of 15,000 last year — to home matches at Shanghai’s Hongkou Stadium.

“Drogba has helped make the Shanghai Shenhua team competitive overnight,” said Ma Dexing, the editor in chief of Titan Sports online, China’s largest sports Web portal. “He is upping the level of the entire league because everyone is vying to be better than Drogba.”