Bumrah begins his home run on hard, grinding day for India

MUMBAI: On a typical subcontinent wicket like in Chennai’s MA Chidambaram Stadium, pace bowling is a different challenge from a helpful Australian track. There is no assistance from the surface, and hence no margin for error. Bowling becomes about finding the right length, maintaining discipline and keeping on motivating oneself.

Yet, for all the hard work, it can be heartbreaking. A lot of edges don’t carry to the keeper or the slip cordon. The opening day of his first Test in India thus proved to be a tough experience for Jasprit Bumrah.

Since making his Test debut in the 2018 series in South Africa, Bumrah had bowled only in pace havens—15 of his 17 Tests were in England, Australia and New Zealand. How he would adapt to the back-breaking, lifeless tracks at home had built the anticipation.

It was a tough test straight up. The conditions on offer on Friday would have stretched his resolve. The Chepauk curator has laid out a slow and bald surface. Bumrah’s bouncers lacked the venom of Melbourne and he couldn’t generate the movement he did at Adelaide. Yet it didn’t stop him from making his mark. When the India spearhead was operating, even the set England batsmen were on their toes. Of the three wickets the visitors lost, Bumrah took two.

He demonstrated why he is regarded as a thinking bowler. With his vast arsenal, he could do without any help from the conditions. England No. 3 Dan Lawrence was done in by a trademark incoming ball, dismissed for a duck. At the stroke of stumps, Bumrah ended opener Dom Sibley’s day-long vigil with another of his feared weapons, the dipping, low fulltoss. For his toil, the star bowler will be pleased with returns of 18.3-2-40-2.

Bumrah said it was about finding ways to take wickets without worrying about a lack of assistance. “This is first match here. It is on the flatter side, not a lot of lateral movement was there and the ball got scuffed up. The wicket was hard and dry. So, yes, it was an interesting first match for me here.

“We’re not complaining how the wicket is, we’re trying to figure out what are the options and how do we solve them. We are trying to create as many chances as we can,” he said after the day’s play.

The conditions were not alien to him as he has played a lot of domestic cricket, he added.

Powered by Joe Root’s classy unbeaten 128 and Dom Sibley’s patient 87, England reached 263/3 on Day 1. The job of the Indian bowlers was made tougher as the SG Test ball went soft and saliva could not be used to shine the ball due to a pandemic-forced ban. With the stitches coming off, they requested the umpires for a ball change but it was denied. A change is usually allowed only if the ball loses shape.

Bumrah said: “When the wicket is on the flatter side, the bounce is less and you are left with limited options. We’re trying to figure what we can do… It doesn’t shine really well because of the new Covid rules where we can’t use saliva. It’s very difficult during that time to maintain the ball.”

There were periods when senior bowlers Ishant Sharma and R Ashwin, bowling along with Bumrah created pressure on the batsmen. The other spinners, Washington Sundar and Shahbaz Nadeem couldn’t provide the support. “We bowled well in patches (where) we created a lot of pressure… apart from the last session where we gave 25-30 runs more than what we wanted to. But this is how the game of cricket goes. We will look to do the same thing tomorrow, create more pressure and hopefully create more chances.”

Root took his time to settle down, content with a strike rate of around 30 early on. As the ball went soft and Virat Kohli was forced to rest his senior bowlers before the second new ball, the England captain shifted gears from the 55th over.

With the third-wicket pair picking boundaries almost every over, Bumrah admitted the body language of the fielders suffered. “We were okay till the second session. But in the beginning of the last session, a little bit here and there because when you take a lot of wickets, it automatically lifts your body language. Sometimes in the heat it’s difficult… but after a while I think we were okay. Then we were trying to put in a lot of effort and trying to create chances.”

There were questions raised over the team management’s decision to pick Nadeem ahead of Kuldeep Yadav after leftarmer Axar Patel was ruled out at the last minute due to a knee injury. Nadeem found it tough against Root and Sibley. He returned first day figures of 20-3-69-0, but with a lot of cricket left in the match, he will hope to make amends.

Bumrah said: “In hindsight we can say a lot of things, but yeah, this was the team we went up with and we back each and every individual… right now there is still a job to be done and we’re focusing on the things we have to do.”

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