Ater a while, it seemed difficult to keep track of every delivery that Jasprit Bumrah bowled in the second Test against England in Vizag. Every single delivery was an event in itself. And every single one of them had a story to tell: The greatness of Jasprit Bumrah. Bumrah had set-up Joe Root a couple of times in the series before delivering the knockout punch. Jonny Bairstow had come prepared for his inswinger but he was done in by away-swing in the second Test. Then there was a jaw-dropping reverse-swinging yorker to Ollie Pope that shattered the stumps.
The poor batter couldn’t have done much as there was little to decode Bumrah’s wrist-action. The ball also swung in late and considerably from outside off to send all three stumps splaying. If his bowling to Root was being in a zone, then what was this delivery all about? Probably savagery blended with skill and finesse.
Ever since Bumrah impressed John Wright with a succession of yorkers in a Syed Musthaq Ali trophy game in 2012-13, the essence of his greatness has been constant evolution. Not just over a season or two, those incremental improvements can be observed even during a spell. Rewind to 2013, and Bumrah did show some promise in the IPL game against Royal Challengers Bangalore, where one of his victims was Virat Kohli. If you scroll through some of his recent videos, it feels one is witnessing Bumrah version 5.0. His evolution over the years is awe-inspiring.
A couple of years after his IPL debut, hi-tech cameras once more zoomed in on the prodigy when Mumbai Indians took on the same side against whom the fast bowler had made an impression. On that occasion, it didn’t exactly turn out to be a pleasant experience for Bumrah as he wasn’t just carted around the park, but also ended up with five wides against his name.
Even in their first game of that tournament against Kolkata Knight Riders, Bumrah had gone for almost 13 an over. While recalling the key moments from that game, the memory bank immediately made a few notes: Suryakumar took a liking to his bowling, Bumrah’s pace was down and enough nuts and bolts of the action seemed to be malfunctioning. Just pore through the video of this match and you will notice all those above-mentioned points. It is true that he had just made a comeback from a knee injury, but this was still Bumrah version 1.0: An uncut diamond.
By the fag end of that year, his bowling had metamorphosised into Bumrah Version 2.0. He hadn’t just bulked up a bit but he was bowling faster. In the Vijay Hazare Trophy, he finished with a rich haul of 21 wickets at an average of 16.09. In the final, at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bumrah was all over a young Nitish Rana.
The southpaw-batter was getting rushed into his shots frequently while facing Bumrah. Rana decided enough was enough and attempted to play with bravado against his nemesis. All that he could do was spoon a catch to the fielder stationed at fine leg. It was quite evident that he was releasing it later than most other bowlers, giving less time for the batter to react. His hyper-extension had come into play.
By the time this writer ended up witnessing Bumrah up-close for the first time in a Ranji Trophy game at the backend of 2016, he had already become a bedrock of India‘s pace attack in limited-overs cricket. What about his skill-set for the longest format of the game? That is why one has to revisit the Ranji Trophy game played between Tamil Nadu and Gujarat in Belagavi.
In the previous match, Bumrah had taken a six-for versus Mumbai in Hubli. So, Bumrah was in a great space — physically and mentally. Unfortunately, the wicket in Belagavi had little in it for a fast bowler. Kaushik Gandhi, the TN opener, was in supreme touch that season and went on to compose a superlative double ton. For a substantial portion of his innings, Gandhi was largely untroubled. There was one bowler who had him hopping a bit and that was Bumrah.
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The big moment arrived for Bumrah, his Test debut in South Africa in Cape Town. In his opening spell, with a whippy action, Bumrah seemed to extract a bit of awkward bounce, but whenever he bowled on a fuller length, Faf du Plessis in particular collected a few boundaries. Bumrah did extract a modicum of seam movement when he pitched the ball further up, but not enough to cause headaches to a couple of senior pros in du Plessis and AB de Villiers.
In his second spell, Bumrah found more life off the deck and also bagged the prized scalp of AB de Villiers. In the second dig, Bumrah provided more evidence of getting nifty movement. The manner in which he got the ball to kick from a length to dismiss du Plessis was a case in point. Bumrah scalped 14 wickets in that series at an average of 25.21. This was Bumrah 3.0 Version.
By mid-2018, India had embarked on a tour to England. There was considerable interest as to how Bumrah would go about with the Dukes ball. Even though Bumrah did generate a hint of conventional swing in the Ranji game in Hubli in 2016, he wasn’t yet renowned for his swing-bowling skills. By the end of that tour, perceptions changed.
By the fourth Test in Southampton, there was a school of thought that Bumrah mainly employed inswingers to the right-handers and away-swingers to left-handers. So, the strategy from Jennings was to offer a lifted bat. Bumrah, though, won the game of cat and mouse by bowling a boomerang-bending inswinger to trap Jennings in front. It swung a massive 3.77 degrees in the air to leave Jennings and perhaps the rest of the English camp in a state of bewilderment.
On the subsequent tour of Australia, he outfoxed Shaun Marsh with one of the greatest deliveries of at least this century: A dipping slower one that even moved in a bit in the air to smash the southpaw on the toe. The release point was quite a bit in front of the body and then you add the hyper-extension of his elbow. Simply put, Marsh had too much to deal with and was dislodged LBW.
When India toured the West Indies, Bumrah had the ball hooping around corners. He plucked 13 wickets at a mind-numbing average of 9.23. By then he had showcased his full repertoire of skills and succeeded across frontiers and formats.
At the completion of that series, one wondered whether Bumrah’s evolution was complete. With a unique action, he bowls with a burst of pace, and the batter seems to pick him a tad late. He generates swing and hits the seam to obtain movement off the deck. He creates a lot of whip and hits the deck hard. He has the yorker, slower ones and cutters. He uses the crease well and also gets a few to wobble away from the right-hander.
No, we were wrong. Bumrah took his game to another plane in the just-concluded Vizag Test versus England. It wasn’t just about how he outsmarted a slew of unsuspecting batters, but Bumrah seemed to visualise and land the ball exactly where he wanted to, almost every single time. He was the smiling predator, but his weapons were unleashed with the swagger of a boxing champion. In a nutshell, he had touched fast-bowling nirvana.
Perhaps in some imaginary land, for a moment you could imagine wearing Bumrah’s spikes to understand how he goes about befuddling the best in the business. Just to see how it feels to be in the Bumrah-Zone.
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