With a wry smile, he flicked his tee back with the thumb and forefinger of each hand like he does after each delivery and whirled around to the top of his bowling mark, half-nodding in appreciation at the quality of the stroke. The virtuoso in him recognised that he was up against another master, the thread of mutual respect binding the bowler and the batter all too obvious to even the most casual onlooker.
This scene isn’t from a high-pressure, plenty-at-stake international encounter. It did eventuate at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai, but at India’s practice session ahead of the first Test against Bangladesh, starting on Thursday. Jasprit Bumrah and Virat Kohli were engaged in a fascinating battle of wits and skill, the champion bowler and the accomplished batter going toe-to-toe without taking a backward step.
Bumrah generally had the better of the exchanges, forcing Kohli on the defensive. Such was the quality of each ball snaking out of his right hand that the man with 80 international hundreds concentrated primarily on keeping his wicket intact. One solid defensive contact followed another; this was cricket of the highest quality, watched only by a handful when it would have lit up a half a session of Test cricket.
Then, without warning, Bumrah produced an in-cutter, cutting back sharply and homing in on the stumps. Kohli was prepared, half-forward, his bat coming down in a straight line, the full face presented towards the ball. Yet, even he found the ball too quick for him, beaten for pace and trapped palpably in front. Bumrah celebrate-appealed, flashed a contented smile, did the tee-flick routine and skipped to his bowling mark. Kohli gritted his teeth, aware that he had been schooled by his own team-mate, no less.
After a couple of careful defensive pushes, Kohli plonked his left foot down the track and punch-drove Bumrah over cover. There was no big flourish on the follow-through, the bat stopping its arc almost immediately after it made contact with the ball. That contact was sweet, the subsequent music it produced mellifluous. The ball sailed over where cover would have been, landed well behind it and sped across the turf to the boundary at the rate of knots. It wasn’t the final act in that compelling passage of play, but those five deliveries involving India’s best bowler and the team’s best batter was as absorbing and gripping a contest as any that might unfold over the next four months.
These next four months are huge from Indian cricket’s perspective. Around two little pockets of seven meaningless (except from a broadcast perspective) Twenty20 Internationals, these four months will see India play 10 Tests, five at home and then five in Australia. These are India’s last engagements in the current cycle of the World Test Championship, whose qualification table they now helm. How they square up against Bangladesh (two Tests), New Zealand (three games) and Australia will determine if India can extend their proud record of reaching the final of every single WTC.
It’s no exaggeration that how India square up will depend largely on how much of a say Bumrah has. Bumrah will be crucial in Australia, without a shadow of doubt, but he will also be a huge factor at home simply because his unique bowling style, heavily reliant on upper body strength and torque and on his powerful forearm and a strong, supple right wrist, is equipped to take the surface out of the equation. Bumrah can wreak havoc on even the most benign of tracks because such is the quality he possesses; India’s trick will be to ensure that they don’t bowl Bumrah to the ground, but also spur him to stay physically fit and strong and mentally fresh so that he can play as many of these ten Tests as possible.
Defying the odds
Bumrah has defied doomsday proponents and come away stronger after back surgery in April last year. Alongside the knee, the back is every fast bowler’s best friend and worst enemy, and once he suffered a stress fracture in 2022, many feared the worst. As it is, he had bucked theories that predicted a rapid breakdown because of his unique action that places so much load on various key body parts, but several experts felt he wouldn’t be the same again after going under the knife.
In a way, but not in the way they had feared, Bumrah has actually not been the same after surgery. Astonishingly, he has been better than Bumrah 1.0. And Bumrah 1.0 was already very, very, very good.
Since his return to international cricket in August last year as captain of a less-than-full-strength side that travelled to Ireland for a three-match T20 series, Bumrah has been rapid, incisive, often unplayable, always threatening.
His pace hasn’t dropped, his craft has become more polished, his repertoire wider, his threat levels massively elevated. In World Cups of both limited-overs varieties, he was India’s battering ram, the enforcer whose imminent arrival at the bowling crease addled batter’s decision-making and presented other bowlers with a freebie scalp or three.
Bumrah channelled his heartbreak of Ahmedabad to script a stunning storyline in the Americas in June, when he was on top of his game ball after ball, over after over, game after game. Using simplicity in thinking and perfection in execution as his twin weapons, he towered over the rest of the bowling group both within his team and outside. That his most expensive spell amounted to 7.25 runs per over (against Australia on a complete shirt-front) was staggeringly ridiculous; Bumrah married economy with penetration, wicket-taking with the timing of his devastation. He had no competition for the Player of the Tournament award, and certainly not after his sensational final two overs in the final when he only conceded six runs and picked up the vital scalp of Marco Jansen, the spearhead in the exertion of pressure that strangled what seemed a straightforward South African run-chase.
During that World Cup, Bumrah produced a wicket almost on demand, delivering one match-turning spell after another. Seldom has one bowler gone through one high-stakes tournament without a single bad match; Bumrah, though, has always been special.
That Bumrah is the most talked about cricketer in a nation obsessed with batters isn’t lost on Gautam Gambhir, India’s head coach.
“Bumrah is the best bowler in the world,” Gambhir said, unequivocally, on Wednesday. “It’s not just his performance, it’s his hunger as well. And the best part is that he wants to play as much Test cricket as he can. It’s not even a luxury, it’s really an honour that you’ve got someone who’s playing for us and sitting in that dressing room who can make a difference at any stage of the game.”
Bumrah was India’s joint second-highest wicket-taker against England earlier this year with 19 sticks, six of them coming in one memorable burst in the visitors’ first innings in the second Test in Visakhapatnam. His radar-directed yorker that made mincemeat of Ollie Pope’s defences and uprooted his middle and leg stumps was a thing of beauty, a joy forever, a missile headed inexorably towards the base of the stumps from the time the ball left his hand and cut an inward arc through the air.
It won’t be a surprise if, between them, skipper Rohit Sharma, Gambhir and selection panel chairman Ajit Agarkar challenge Bumrah to play all ten Tests these next few months. There are enough gaps between series, and even between matches in Australia and Bumrah has been in cold storage for more than two and a half months now. At 30, he is at the peak of his powers; a rhythm bowler like him doesn’t like to sit out and Rohit has shown himself to be a smart utiliser of resources who intuitively knows when to unleash his prized racehorse, and just how much to push him.
If, as has been their wont, India’s spinners headlined by R. Ashwin have their usual say in home conditions, Bumrah will stay fresher for longer, because the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow lies in Australia.
It’s there, more than in India, that the leadership group will want Bumrah at his fierce, fearsome best with India chasing an unprecedented hat-trick of Test series triumphs Down Under. Australia recognise that Bumrah will be the one they must be most switched on against, but even then, he can be more than a handful because such is his command over his multi-faceted craft.
Bumrah is quite the complete fast bowler, equally adept with the new ball as he is with an ageing or the old ball. He uses reverse with spectacular effect, as Joe Root found out the hard way in the early part of the five-match series this year, not just targeting toes and stumps but also getting the ball to go in-out, in-out and therefore threatening the outside edge of the right-handed batter too. On the odd occasion that India crave control, Rohit can bring his premier bowler back on for a three-over burst that can dramatically alter the game-situation because the pressure Bumrah imposes from his end often translates to wickets at the other.
Bumrah must be chomping at the bit to have a go at Bangladesh. Would he have been better off for a bowl with the red SG Test ball in the Duleep Trophy before this series, considering he hasn’t had any game-time at all since the end of June? For sure. But will that impact his efficacy in any shape or form? No sir, not by a long way.
Published - September 19, 2024 06:13 am IST
