In a 44-ball demolition act, Jasprit Bumrah returned his best-ever ODI figures. Aadya Sharma revels in a bowler who continues to raise the ceiling of excellence.
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It’s difficult to write anything new about Jasprit Bumrah. There’s nothing quite as imperfectly perfect as him. It’s ridiculous to think that someone can contort their body in such an inelastic, unsightly manner and still produce deliveries that spell pure magic. The gait, load-up, stiff arms and fiddly release chuck every coaching manual out of the window. Kids, there’s no one right way of rolling your arm over.
In an age where nothing can be consumed without frills and drama, Bumrah is, at the very core, so boring. He’s got roughly three facial expressions – one of which is a post-dismissal grin. He doesn’t indulge in any theatrics. He abstains from click-worthy pre-match banter. When he doesn’t have a ball in hand, he hardly hogs the attention. But place that piece of leather in his palm, and he transforms into a behemoth, an eerily formulaic wicket-bagging robot of a bowler.
On Tuesday, the overarching context didn’t matter – for him, it never seems to. England’s batting was stacked with white-ball superstars of the finest repute. The daunting double-B word, the most popular term in cricket right now (apart from with the man himself), had extended to ‘Mott-Ball’. Previews proudly displayed last month’s magical figure of 498. Ten balls is all it took for the rundown to hit the base of the bin.
Jason Roy was walking back, having sprawled at a Bumrah delivery wide of the off stump. The previous delivery had cut him in half, the one before it had also swerved in sharply, and it made Roy predict another swinging half-volley that wasn’t to be. Two balls later, Joe Root was left stunned by a seemingly standard length ball that kicked up and took his edge. Jonny Bairstow suffered a similar fate. With Bumrah, you can’t premeditate. Sometimes, you can only hope.
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Over the next couple of hours, there was more of the Bumrah brilliance that we’re so conditioned to. And yet, it was all still so watchable. The ball was jagging around in the first ten overs – the average stood at 0.8 degrees – which added a whole different dimension to his usual staple of faultless line and changing length. Liam Livingstone, a batter of extraordinary range, was treated to a delivery extraordinaire: an attempt to walk across and pat the ball away ended in a rattle of the stumps. According to CricViz, the degree of swing – at 3.2° – was the highest Bumrah had produced for a wicket-taking ODI delivery ever. There was no need to send down toe-crushers or startle batters with half-trackers. Bumrah strung together a spell for the ages with an unerring attack of fullish deliveries, reminding everyone that length balls aren’t just fodder for the modern-day bat to whack around.
Along the way came a bevvy of records: what started as the best ODI opening spell by an India bowler in nine years, ended with career-best figures for Bumrah. No other India quick had picked six wickets in an ODI in England. Only two Indian men had claimed better ODI figures anywhere. Of the six India quicks to have taken more international wickets than him, none have a remotely competitive average or strike rate. It didn’t matter that he was playing just his fourth one-dayer in 19 months, the machine inside just kicked into action. Ask him to bowl in a wheat field with a golf ball, and he’ll still pick up wickets.
We’re 316 international wickets into his career, but there’s still something to appreciate in each spell, something so unique from everything else in the cricketing realm. Bumrah himself seems to be amused by his own magic at times: after the Livingstone dismissal, he was seen excitedly knocking his right wrist to gesture how brilliantly the ball had come out of his hand. Even the ever-stoic Rahul Dravid, usually unmoved unless Rishabh Pant hits a century, got off his chair to celebrate Bumrah’s five-wicket haul.
There wasn’t much different on Tuesday to the Bumrah we know: it was the same arm-spraining action, the same scarcity of expressions, the same mechanical sprint and release. And yet, it was all so watchable. It’s difficult to write anything new on Bumrah, really. But there’s still so much to appreciate.
