“When Jasprit Bumrah first started playing cricket, he only wanted to bowl short balls, targeting the head of the batter. He had to be told that he needed to learn variations. He needed to bowl cutters, yorkers, to be able to set up batters,” the Indian fast bowler’s childhood coach fondly tells India Today in Ahmedabad.
Bumrah, who was introduced to professional sport quite late in his life (at the age of 16), needed to quickly learn the trade if he was to survive the cutthroat cricketing landscape in India. As a lean, mean 16-year-old, what Bumrah had, was his unique action and blistering pace to trouble batters. In Ahmedabad, for that matter in India and in the world, no one had ever seen that action before. Kids of the same age group in the nets were scared of facing Bumrah. Between themselves, they whispered, called him a chucker, afraid that if coach Trivedi heard of it, he would give them a mouthful.
“The action was his greatest weapon. He needed to learn variation, and he needed to work on his basics. I had never seen this kind of action before, and when I saw the academy kids struggling, I knew that this kid was going to be special,” Trivedi reminisced.
Bumrah was a perceptive kid. He listened, he learnt, and he implemented. Those early lessons and that knack for picking up things have worked wonders for Jasprit Bumrah in his cricketing career. Undoubtedly one of the greatest fast bowlers of his generation, Bumrah has used his mastery to great effect in the ongoing T20 World Cup as well.
While the wickets’ column does not have Bumrah anywhere near the top 10 bowlers in this tournament, anyone watching the games would vouch that Jasprit Bumrah is perhaps bowling some of his best balls in this edition of the competition.
Bumrah would have been a contender for bowling one of the best spells in this tournament, if not for India’s loss against South Africa in Ahmedabad. He ripped through Quinton de Kock’s stumps and then bamboozled Ryan Rickelton in the powerplay. He was then charged with bowling at the death, where he dismissed Corbin Bosch with a sharp caught-and-bowled chance in the penultimate over of the innings.
While South Africa accounted for three of the nine wickets that he has taken in this World Cup, the fast bowler has not been equally effective in terms of picking up wickets consistently in the tournament.
Many former cricketers like Sunil Gavaskar and Dinesh Karthik have urged the Indian team to give Bumrah a proper go in the powerplay. As of March 3, the fast bowler has only bowled eight overs in the powerplay across six matches in this competition. This has happened because the Indian team has used Jasprit Bumrah almost like a floater. Traditionally, a role associated with the batting unit, a floater is someone called upon according to the situation of the game. The floater either has to save the team from a crisis or patiently wait on the bench while others make merry against bowling attacks.
In Bumrah’s case, he has been called upon to bowl the toughest overs in the match, against the best batters of the opposition team.
Take India’s Super 8 match against West Indies, for example. Bumrah bowled only one over in the powerplay (the fifth), and was then held back to face the dangerous Windies middle order. He delivered overs 12, 18 and 20, and broke through the Windies line-up by picking up the crucial wickets of Shimron Hetmyer and Roston Chase.
Against South Africa, as explained, Bumrah bowled two difficult overs in the powerplay and then two more difficult overs at the death.
JASPRIT BUMRAH’S BOWLING DISTRIBUTION IN T20 WORLD CUP
- vs NAM: 7, 12, 14, 17 | (1/20)
- vs PAK: 2, 4 | (2/17)
- vs NED: 2, 4, 16 | (1/17)
- vs SA: 2, 4, 17, 19 | (3/15)
- vs ZIM: 5, 8, 13 | (0/21)
- vs WI: 5, 12, 18, 20 | (2/36)
BREAKDOWN BY OVERS
- 0–6: 8 overs
- 7–14: 5 overs
- 15–20: 6 overs
India head coach Gautam Gambhir was asked about this odd distribution of Bumrah’s overs after the match against the West Indies. Why was the fast bowler not getting a more traditional bowling rhythm? Gambhir explained that India was using the best bowlers in the world against the best batters in the world, hoping to neutralise the threat and build pressure in other phases of the game.
“I think it’s more to do with the opposition, where their firepower lies. Especially, we knew that the West Indies had a lot of firepower in the middle, with Hetmyer, Rovman and Sherfane. And we know that those guys are quality players; those guys can take the game away from us. So we always knew that we needed someone like Bumrah in the middle to bowl at them,” Gautam Gambhir said.
Gambhir added that Bumrah was also being called to bowl in the middle phases when India were leaking runs. Essentially, wherever a crisis comes, Bumrah follows.
“Every time we have a big over, we can go back to Bumrah and try to control the game. Because you don’t want, in a T20 game, two back-to-back big overs as well. That can take the game away from you. So for me, I think Bumrah is a banker, and we’ll continue to use him in different ways.”
JASPRIT BUMRAH: TOUCHED BY GOD
In yesteryears, in an extremely strong Australian team, legendary fast bowlers like Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee would bowl their set spells and then wait for the tail to come in. When the opposition team was six wickets down, the duo would begin their warm-up, come on to bowl and wipe out the tail in a matter of minutes.
Now, this is not to take anything away from them. They are two of the greatest fast bowlers of all time. But the example is a reminder of how the wicket column can be manipulated, tilted towards a player who values the number of wickets he takes.
Bumrah, however, ever the honest team man that he is, does not delve into those things. He does not have the luxury to do so. He does what he is asked.
He trains, fixes his problems, executes the role that he is assigned, and goes to bed.
The wickets’ column does not correctly tell the story of the horror that Bumrah has been able to inflict on opposition teams.
In this World Cup, he is bowling at an economy of 6.30, at a strike rate of 13.33 – ridiculous by T20 standards. It closely mimics his heroics from the 2023 ODI World Cup, where he had the best economy in the tournament at 4.06, but was not the highest wicket-taker.
But none of that matters. Bumrah wants to win. He has always wanted to win matches for India. His childhood coach, Kishore Trivedi, believes that Bumrah’s right arm is touched by God.
“His action is God-gifted. His right arm and his body are touched by God. Imagine, from such a small coaching centre, the best bowler in the world was produced – that makes me happy,” he says.
There are better legacies than the wickets’ column, believes Trivedi. Once called a chucker in the streets of Ahmedabad, today kids from the city and around the world try to copy Bumrah’s action in the nets.
“I am very happy. Very content. And I hope that more fast bowlers come out of my academy. There are three or four 12-year-olds who have Bumrah’s action. I have not tried to change them,” Trivedi says.
Could there be a greater compliment, a bigger legacy than that?
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