Bumrah gives a new dimension
NEWDELHI: With remarkable pace from a whippy action, unwavering accuracy and a basketful of wickets, Jasprit Bumrah has left the cricket world in a thrall. Minutes after he ended Australia’s final resistance in the Melbourne Test by removing Pat Cummins, Virat Kohli paid the ultimate compliment.
Saying even he would not want to face a revved-up Bumrah on a lively pitch like Perth, where Australia won the second Test, was the skipper’s lofty assessment of the spearhead, the batting super star acknowledging a bowler worthy of that tag. “He looks at a pitch and he doesn’t think it’s a hard toil, he thinks wickets, ‘how can I get a breakthrough for the team?’ He’s as strong-headed as I’ve seen anyone and that’s the key to his success that I’ve seen in the last 12 months,” Kohli said.
Becoming as versatile and impactful across formats like Kohli himself, Bumrah instantly proved he belonged in Test cricket after his Cape Town debut in January. His last over before lunch on the third day at MCG – he trapped Shaun Marsh with a dipping slower one off the last delivery before the interval – was classical Test cricket from an outright unorthodox player of the T20 generation.
Marsh need not have felt very gloomy. Bumrah, spotted by former India coach John Wright and recommended to Mumbai Indians before the 2013 IPL and mentored by Lasith Malinga, had a similar effect on his maiden Test victim – a set AB de Villiers who played on to his stumps at the end of a probing over.
Bumrah had rapidly proved himself as a stock, shock and versatile bowler since that moment. And in Australia, his brilliance has helped use the older Kookaburra ball that loses life, on a drop-in pitch no less, far more effectively.
In 2018, India bowlers have taken all 20 wickets in nine of their 11 away Tests. Bumrah – yet to play a Test in India – has played in eight. The white ball spearhead with yorkers and slower ones has brought a fresh dimension to bowling in Tests. Indian fans who put batsmen on top can put this surefire bowling hit across formats on the same pedestal.
His temperament – a grin would do instead of angry sendoffs after taking a wicket – and adaptability has experts gushing. Bumrah, 25, says he picks the brains of team mates to quickly read pitch conditions and alter his bowling plans.
The self-tutored bowler – ‘I mostly learned watching cricket on TV’ – had become such a vital cog after South Africa that Kohli couldn’t wait for Bumrah to return after missing the first two Tests in England due to a thumb fracture. He promptly delivered, taking seven scalps in the Trent Bridge win.
Michael Clarke has called Bumrah a genius; others have dubbed him a freak.
But that would be overlooking the level of skill and fitness work he has put in, allowing for the same intensity bowling the first and last ball of the day. Playing another big role to help India seal their first series in Australia at Sydney next week will be the icing on the cake. For the team management though, it will be about preserving the bowler who confounds batsmen every 47.4
deliveries.