Jasprit Bumrah: Man of All Conditions; India’s Messiah

Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope were steadily building a partnership. England were looking to change the momentum of the match as runs were coming by easily. Just after the drinks break, Axar Patel induced a false attacking stroke from Zak Crawley. But it was India’s crisis man Jasprit Bumrah who yet again stole the show with a fast bowling masterclass.

Jasprit Bumrah ripped apart the English batting lineup with a spell that had everything. It was a theatrical experience watching the master weave his magic. Bumrah took the priced scalp of Joe Root and then never looked back. Bumrah schooled Joe Root throughout the over. The set up was brilliant. With the lbw dismissal playing on his mind, Root was trying to protect his pads by coming down the track, playing it under his eyes. After a series of inswinging deliveries, the genius quietly slipped up an outswinger which did just enough off the deck to deviate off the seam where poor Joe Root knicked it off to the slip and Shubhman Gill pouched upon a tricky catch.

He again kept asking questions to Ollie Pope bowling it in the corridor of uncertainty with an occasional slower ball aimed at the stumps. Then came the Jasprit Bumrah special. A big booming inswinger that not just rattled the stumps but the hopes of English fans. The ball pitched on the middle and off stump which swung in 95 cms from the stump to make a complete mockery of the woodwork. It was a delivery right from the Waqar Younis playbook. Absolutely nothing could be done by the batter. This will be a part of the highlights package once the great man retires.

Jonny Bairstow was seeing all the menace from one end. Next was his turn to face the wrath. Bumrah kept nagging around the good length testing the patience of the Yorkshireman. In trying to break free, he wafted at a delivery bowled around fifth stump just to knick it off to Shubhman Gill in the slips. Bumrah had his third and the pendulum was completely tilted towards India.

As Kuldeep took 2 more English wickets, Ben Stokes was stranded without much batting left. He had no chance but to take some risks. But he was quite watchful against Bumrah. Bumrah kept attacking the stumps to deny Stokes room to free his arms. He kept it tight around the off stump. But one ball just seemed back in staying a little low beating through Stokes’ defence. The reaction from Stokes summed it all up. With bat fallen on the ground in despair, Stokes spread his arm gesturing at what else he could have done on that delivery acknowledging the mastery of the skiddy bowler. Bumrah gave a sheepish smile at Stokes pricing out yet another victim.

The fast bowler was now hungry for his maiden fifer in India. It was just so easy for Bumrah to take 2 more tail-end wickets. Tom Hartley edged one to Gill in the slips. Bumrah looked at the heavens with arms aloft in the air to cherish the momentous milestone in his short yet shining career. Then he pinned James Anderson on the pad with a full swinging delivery to take his sixth and final wicket of the innings. What makes him special is his sheer ability to make things happen out of nowhere. Yet again when it looked like England could run away with the game, Jasprit Bumrah completely shut off the game with his exceptional bowling.

Jasprit Bumrah ended the innings with figures of 6/45, the third best of his career and the best figures in India by an Indian seamer in this century. This was his sixth five wicket haul in tests having taken a fifer in every country he played (Australia, South Africa, England, India, and West Indies). He also completed 150 wickets in this innings. Bumrah has the second best average in tests (20.28) pipping ahead of legends like Sir Curtley Ambrose, Malcolm Marshall, and Joel Garner. Jasprit Bumrah’s exceptional bowling prowess is evident in his impressive career statistics, boasting an average of 20.28 and a strike rate of 44.7 at the end of innings where he has claimed his 150th wicket, showcasing his ability to consistently deliver breakthroughs with both skill and efficiency on the cricket field.

At the start of his career, people claimed that Bumrah could be decoded by the batsmen once they figured out his unorthodox action. Firstly very few considered him to be a test bowler. But adaptability is the second nature of the ever evolving Jasprit Bumrah. It is just extraordinary how he is able to shape the ball away from the right hander with the action he possesses. He can swing the ball in English conditions, extract extra bounce in South African conditions, generate lateral seam movement in Australia, and make the ball talk even on dead and dusty pitches like the Oval or Vizag using the art of reverse swing, cutters and yorkers. Not to forget his lethal bouncer aiming at the batsmen’s rib cage or the helmet. He does this at a miser economy of 2.72. Being a quick learner, he can adapt to the line and length far too quickly. He has often talked about focusing on process rather than results. His philosophical approach to his bowling makes him do things repeatedly without complicating things.

In an era where the Indian fast bowlers were considered as the weak link of the team, with runs being the easiest to come by, watching Jasprit Bumrah bowl and dominate the batters the way he does, gives a soothing sight to every Indian soul. Bragging about a fast bowler was a thing we could just dare to dream. In a generation where we could brag about batters like the Tendulkars and the Dravids, today the scenario is different.

Watching Jasprit Bumrah dominate in all conditions and across formats makes every Indian fan beam with pride. In the past when people were eagerly waiting to watch batsmen score hundreds, today everyone was glued to see Bumrah’s spell. He is the cheat code that we never had and probably will never will. Even when we know about his geniuses with the ball, every time that he walks on a cricket field, he does something different, something special that no one else could anticipate. Keep enthraling us, Mr. Reliable!

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