When Root can’t read him, I fear for the rest

IF SOMEONE as good as Joe Root is habitually struggling with a particular bowler, you can bet your bottom dollar that every batter on the Test scene will be.

Jasprit Bumrah has a unique action and there’s no doubting that India are a much better team with him in it.

He’s an incredible Twenty20 bowler, but as his record of 152 wickets at just 20.28 runs each attests, he is even more effective in Test cricket. Statistically, he is right up there with the very best to have played the game.

Facing him isn’t like facing anyone else in the world and I used to hate it. Sri Lanka’s

Lasith Malinga, with his slingy round-arm release, had that point of difference about him and Bumrah has something similar in that his deliveries are incredibly hard to pick up.

Because he trots in from a very calm, short, shuffling runup, he generates no real energy and there is therefore no real build-up to the ball suddenly being upon you at the striker’s end. It can be very disconcerting.

Think of some of the best fast bowlers that have played the game and they tend to have a common thread of approaching the crease with such a tempo that your brain is telling you to expect searing pace.

Bumrah is the opposite, but he creates such whip at the crease by bracing his front leg — always a good sign for bowling fast — and then releasing the ball, not over his head or even over his front foot, but a good foot closer to the batter.

Unusually for a fast bowler, his arm is stiff in delivery, but this is all very natural to him and the exemplary control he possesses comes from a short delivery stride, a feature that ensures great balance at the crease.

So while aspects of his action make it very difficult for opponents to time their trigger movements to him, the fact that it is straight-lined and balanced means not a huge amount can go wrong.

Bumrah has also got a complete array of skills. He is able to swing the new ball both ways — recall the famous inducker Keaton Jennings left at the Rose Bowl in 2018 that would have hit the middle of middle stump — away from lefthanders from around the wicket or, as we witnessed yesterday, get the older ball reverseswinging.

What makes him so dangerous when reverse-swing comes into play is that he doesn’t tend to get the ball hooping — and therefore needing to start it on an exaggerated line to have an effect — but moving a very subtle amount to keep batters guessing.

The ball that did for Root yesterday was a classic of this type: four consecutive balls ducked in, followed by one which went out. The half-bat width difference of movement proved deadly. Unsure of the direction of travel, Root had to play and nicked behind. It was a beautiful set-up by a high-class bowler.

Equally, I don’t think any player in the world gets a bat on the inswinging yorker that did for Ollie Pope. Again, it didn’t boomerang, it just did that perfect amount and ended up creating one of the most iconic pictures a fast bowler could wish to see — not one, but two stumps splattered.

Sure, the fourth wicket of Bumrah’s six for 45 didn’t get up as much as Ben Stokes anticipated, but it was still clever bowling as it was the inswinger from around the wicket and that brought the stumps into play.

He only came back from a really nasty back injury last year and for him to be taking Test wickets in the manner he has is an inspiration for all bowlers who have suffered from long-term lay-offs.

Unsure of the direction of travel, Root had to play and nicked behind