Tale of two games: one when Jasprit Bumrah was bowling, one when he wasn't

Times

4 hours ago

Crowds typically turn up to watch batsmen rather than bowlers, but they definitely make an exception for Jasprit Bumrah. When he has ball in hand, people stop to savour the sight of something extraordinary — just as they once did when Shane Warne was conjuring his magic, and as they still do when Mark Wood sprints in to hit speeds few bowlers have matched. Such entertainers turn cricket into pure theatre. Every ball is an event.
Bumrah bowled seven spells during England's first innings, all down the hill from the Kirkstall Lane End and every one of them containing incident. He took five wickets, had each of the top three scorers — Ollie Pope, Harry Brook and Ben Duckett — put down by slip or gully fielders at a combined cost to his side of 110 runs, and also had Brook, who went on to make 99, caught off a no ball before he had scored.
The genuine boundaries that were struck off him, as opposed to those that came off the edge, were so rare as to stick in the memory, the best of them when Brook came down the track to slap him disdainfully over extra cover in the manner of Kevin Pietersen in his pomp.
There were two games going on: one when Bumrah was bowling, and one when he was not. Whereas Bumrah took five for 83 at an economy rate of 3.36 runs per over, India's other three seamers between them returned figures of five for 288 at a rate of 5.43 per over. No secret which game England's batsmen preferred.
Like Warne, Bumrah has a habit of exploiting the passages of play that others neglect. With Saturday's final session extended to 7.15pm because of a rain break earlier in the day, Indian thoughts naturally drifted towards the close, and a chance to regroup overnight. Not Bumrah.
He returned for a two-over burst and not only removed England's most prized player, Joe Root, but during an electric final over consisting of nine balls as he pushed the limits and strove for additional pace, he induced Brook into flapping at a short ball that was caught by the diving Mohammed Siraj, only for it to transpire that Bumrah had overstepped. Furious, Bumrah unleashed one of his finest yorkers, which Brook somehow managed to dig out before finishing the day with a ferocious bouncer that lifted Brook off his feet.
Every ball is an event, but every ball is also an opportunity, however late in the day.
If some people had headed for the exit by this juncture on what had been a swelteringly hot day, there were still plenty in their seats who relished the drama. In its way, the bouncer to Brook was every bit as spellbinding as Bumrah exploding Ollie Pope's stumps with a yorker in Visakhapatnam last year.
Bumrah's methods are not only unique but of a sort that make life very difficult for batsmen trained to look for familiar cues, which with him are frustratingly absent. He does not run up in a conventional manner, ambling in over several yards at what is little more than a brisk walk, nor deliver the ball conventionally, a lot of the work being done by a braced front leg, a snap of the wrist and a late release.
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Steve Harmison, who has studied the methods of many fast bowlers and was one himself, can think of few who generated the sort of pace Bumrah finds from a similarly short sprint. He would put Simon Jones in this bracket, and also Wood before he changed to a longer run-up in the winter of 2018-19.
As was the case with Jones, and Wood when he was using a shorter run, Bumrah has found himself vulnerable to injury, and after recent back problems it has already been determined that he will almost certainly play a maximum of three Tests in this series.
On the evidence so far, England will fancy their chances in the two matches he misses — which may be the third and fifth Tests, at Lord's and the Oval, as they come hard on the heels of the second and fourth games.
Harmison fears Bumrah may be prevented from racking up the stupendous wicket hauls of others because of the demands his action makes on his body, and the fact he is a multi-format bowler. As a result, he may not be remembered in conversations about the greatest of all time. Anyone prepared to look beyond the wickets column, though, will find plenty of evidence of his brilliance.
No bowler with 200 Test wickets to their name has a lower average than Bumrah's 19.33 and only Kagiso Rabada has a better strike rate than his 41.8 balls per wicket. He is getting better, too. In his past 20 Tests dating back to early 2022, he has taken 103 wickets at an average of just 15.27. Bowlers in the modern game simply do not accrue figures like that.
When Bumrah bowled Josh Tongue to claim his fifth wicket, he was mobbed by team-mates who appreciated his lion-hearted efforts and outrageous skill. He was handed the ball, wrapped it up safely in his cap and jumper and walked off smiling broadly. He should have had his five-for much earlier, but he got there in the end.