KKR found a perfect antidote to Jasprit Bumrah’s genius in Manish Pandey, but which other batters have had the most T20 success against him?

May 3, 2024: One ball after the powerplay, the Kolkata Knight Riders are reeling at 57-5. After weeks of booing the home captain, the crowd at the Wankhede Stadium have put all of their voices behind the home side, Mumbai Indians, who have not lost to KKR here since 2012. Surely MI cannot lose from here?

Andre Russell and Ramandeep Singh are to follow, but the KKR team management decide to put in a buffer until they arrive. Their many all-rounders enable them to use a specialist batter as their Impact Player, so they bring in Manish Pandey.

Pandey has few T20 credentials to speak of. He strikes at 123 in the format. In the IPL, that drops to 121. In IPL 2023, he struck at 135. At that point, he had yet to play in 2024. Sending him out at this point seems counterintuitive, more so because what KKR need is a filler before Russell and Ramandeep. They have in their reserves Anukul Roy – who, unlike Pandey, can bowl.

KKR still back Pandey over Roy. They are fine without the extra bowler. Pandey predictably pushes the ball around to reach 20 off the first 18 balls he faces. After 13 overs, KKR are 109-5.

Hardik Pandya decides to go in for the kill. He recalls Jasprit Bumrah, who has bowled only one over until now. Pandey glances the first ball for four and biffs the third ball over Bumrah’s head for six.

Pandey eventually falls for a 31-ball 42 – but 11 of these runs have come off five balls from Bumrah. Bumrah finishes with ridiculous figures of 3.5-0-18-3 – but that includes 3-0-7-3 against batters other than Pandey.

In Pandey, KKR had found a momentary cheat code against Bumrah, the big bad boss everyone has to conquer to win a game against MI.

This is not a one-off success for Pandey against Bumrah. KKR didn’t abruptly picked Pandey after benching him for 10 matches. They did what they did because, despite having an otherwise unremarkable T20 career, Pandey has an excellent record against Bumrah – and Bumrah had three overs up his sleeve that night when they made that change.

In fact, with a 40-ball cut-off, no batter has struck at a rate better than Pandey’s 190 against Bumrah in IPL history.

Other successful batters include Faf du Plessis, Shreyas Iyer, Virat Kohli, Ambati Rayudu, KL Rahul, and Shikhar Dhawan, none of whom are big hitters – along with the usual suspects, AB de Villiers and Andre Russell.

It is important to note that Jos Buttler and Chris Gayle, who usually start off slow (when Bumrah usually starts) before accelerating. They also seldom bat in the death overs (when Bumrah returns). As a result, they have lower scoring rates. Gayle’s 77, in fact, makes very ordinary reading.

Note:
Reducing the cut-off to 30 balls adds only one more batter above Pandey – JP Duminy (212 from 33 balls). No one else has faced 15 balls from Bumrah and has scored at a quicker rate. Bumrah’s current MI teammate, Suryakumar Yadav, made 27 in 12 balls (strike rate 225) off Bumrah during his KKR days, while Heinrich Klaasen has 22 in 11 balls (200). 

What about international cricket? The 40-ball cut-off will not work here, for only Aaron Finch (48) meets that cut-off. As with most Indians, Bumrah has bowled only 26.4 percent of his T20 overs for the national team, significantly lower than his 61.4 percent in the IPL. Let us reduce the cut-off to 15 balls.

The list throws up some expected names at the top – Aaron Finch, Marcus Stoinis, Tim Seifert, Kieron Pollard, Glenn Maxwell, and Shane Watson, along with the mercurial Niroshan Dickwella.

What if one considers numbers across all Twenty20 cricket? Let us keep the cut-off to 40 balls yet again.

Not only is Pandey’s strike rate against Bumrah (190) exceptional, no one else comes even close. Du Plessis (151) is the only other batter to have breached the 150-mark.

Not too unexpectedly, most have struggled to strike at more than even 120 against Bumrah, while many – including Sanju Samson, Stoinis, Watson, and the previously discussed Buttler and Gayle – have scored at fewer than a run a ball.

Curiously, Pandey’s success has not been reliant on sixes. He has hit only two of them against Bumrah in 42 balls, but he has hit 10 fours. The startling feature of this duel, however, has been only the six dot balls – fewer than one every over. Pandey has found a way to score off Bumrah six out of seven balls – a proportion so high that no one else comes onto the horizon.

It is slightly counterintuitive, because unlike in ODIs, T20 success typically depends on frequency of big hits and not minimising dot ball count. But then, Bumrah is no ordinary bowler, and scoring off him perhaps involves more conventional methods.

Axar Patel’s numbers make interesting reading. He has scored only 49 runs in 48 balls off Bumrah, but ranks high on the scoring shot percent. His 23 singles indicate his role – of being able to successfully get off strike against Bumrah.

Putting Bumrah away for sixes, of course, is not easy. De Villiers (eight) and Duminy (seven) are the only ones to have hit more than five, while Kohli and Pat Cummins have exactly as many. It is perhaps prudent to use boundary hits – fours and sixes.

Pandey’s success against Bumrah leaves little doubt. Not only has he kept the dot balls to a bare minimum but he has also found boundaries more often than anyone else.

Finally, it is worth a look at the scoring patterns of every batter against Bumrah.

Despite the low six count, Pandey has been able to score quickly against Bumrah over the years. When he has not found a boundary, he has ensured he has managed a run.

Bumrah might have been the bowler of the season so far, or even arguably the greatest bowler in IPL history, but there is an antidote to him.

All numbers accurate until Mumbai Indians v Sunrisers Hyderabad, May 6, 2024

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