Rohit Sharma might not acknowledge it publicly, but had it not been for Jasprit Bumrah, this Test series might not be standing at 1-1 with three games to play.
Spin was supposed to play the lead role in India’s bid to systematically dismantle England’s ‘Bazball’, but sticking to convention hasn’t been Bumrah’s strong point. Just look at his action if you don’t agree. So Bumrah went out and tore the prepared script to shreds, writing one of his own and effortlessly walking away with the Player of the Match award in the second Test for match figures of nine for 91.
Nine for 91 sounds impressive enough, but it can’t even start to convey the magic Bumrah produced in Visakhapatnam. He was India’s best bowler in the Hyderabad debacle, but not even he could prevent a 28-run surrender. Down 0-1, minus his regular partners Mohammed Shami and Mohammed Siraj, and with the team also missing Virat Kohli, KL Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja, India needed someone to take ownership of pride and respect.
Young batsmen Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill did so in the two batting innings, respectively, but Test matches are seldom won on batting brilliance alone. It’s not often that teams don’t take 20 wickets and still end up victorious which is why, despite their ‘second-class’ status, it is the largely uncelebrated bowlers who are the true heroes.
Bumrah, however, hasn’t ever been uncelebrated, not since he broke into the national set-up as a raw, unique, unconventional, gangly, awkward 23-year-old in 2016. Right from the off, he made people sit up and take notice. First, with his rare approach to the bowling crease, a short walk followed by a slightly longer run during which he gathered momentum and then exploded without warning. Then, with his hyperextended right elbow that allowed him to deliver the ball from a few centimetres closer to the batsman than the rest. And, after all this, with his bewildering admixture of sudden infusions of pace, the bounce he procured from a length, his control over the yorker and the bouquet of slower deliveries at his command.
Within weeks, he had the pundits oohing and aahing in delight. Even the connoisseurs couldn’t help but be sucked into the uncomplicated world of Bumrah, and once he showed that he was equally at home in the red-ball format as in its shorter white-ball variants, his legend has grown beyond belief.
A few more notches were added to that legend over the four days of the second Test in Visakhapatnam, which India won by 106 runs to level the series 1-1. On the second day, after India hadn’t made the most of winning the toss in the best batting conditions of the match, Bumrah unleashed such unchecked mayhem in three spells that came quickly on the back of each other that you could see he had done a number on the England batsmen. There have been tremendous bursts of reverse-swing bowling in the past, including from the masters of that craft, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, but over three spectacular spells of 4-2-3-2, 4-2-9-1 and 3.5-0-9-3 – that’s a collective 11.5-4-21-6 – Bumrah ripped the heart out of the England batting.
The effect wasn’t just in the immediate outcome – England were bowled out for 253 and conceded a lead of 143. There was a time in the past when teams visiting India would go after the new ball because they knew quality spin wasn’t too far away. Now, they know that a quality reverse swinger with the older ball is also lying in wait, and that that quality reverse swinger is also an excellent user of the new ball. So, who do they attack? Okay, let’s go for the spinners, seems to be the current England mantra.
Bumrah has been first Virat Kohli’s and now Rohit’s go-to man outside the sub-continent, where he has played most of his 34 Tests – this is only his sixth game in India – but his record at home is even more exemplary, a tribute to how far he has come on in only six years as a Test cricketer. If his six for 45 on Saturday was breathtaking, three for 46 on Monday was only slightly more workmanlike. In the morning, when England resumed their chase of 399 at 67 for one, he positively embarrassed the gifted Zak Crawley with a brilliant five-over exhibition of swing that, as generally happens, didn’t bring him a single wicket. Bumrah was perhaps slightly guilty of not bowling straight enough to make the batsman play consistently, but that can be put down to anxiety and the desire to make a quick strike.
As the day went on, he recalibrated his radar and returned to being the destroyer that England were so wary – fearful too, maybe? – of. He had the ball on a string, controlling it like a puppeteer does a marionette. A little inward dip here, a tiny outward jag there, batsmen set up, knowing what was going to come but powerless to stop themselves from falling victims. Shane Warne was a master at that; Bumrah is getting there, rapidly.
Every moment of mini-crisis, perceived or genuine, and Rohit’s eyes settled on Bumrah, exhorting him to do the needful. Bumrah obliged with a smile, a gleam - a wicked smile, a cunning gleam. Jonny Bairstow watched in horror as the ball cut back a mile and pinged him in front, Ben Foakes almost let out a yelp of disgust as Bumrah fooled him in the air and coaxed him to push a slower one tamely back to him. Both were set batsmen, the former on 26 and the latter on 36. They knew Bumrah would conjure one of his famous tricks. They certainly did. But they knew not how to respond. No sir, they did not.
As the applause gathered steam in anticipation of R. Ashwin’s 500th Test wicket, Bumrah decided to put that party on hold. And set off a party on his own. Tom Hartley, the feisty left-hander batting at No. 9, had played strokes that would have done a top-order batsman proud but not even the most accomplished top-order bat could have survived the final statement from Bumrah, a reverse outswinger that whooped past the outside edge and plucked out off pole. Visakhapatnam roared, but it was the roar of the lion-hearted Bumrah that reverberated the loudest. What a champion.
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