BIRMINGHAM: It’s rare for a bowler to draw the ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s when the batting team goes hammer and tongs. Even rarer to bowl 30 dot balls in a 10-over spell when the batting team makes 337. And in such a total, how often does one concede 27 in five overs when the other five in the last 10 go for 65?
Even as commoners at the media dining room at Edgbaston let out cries of exasperation, Sunil Gavaskar and Michael Vaughan watched in what appeared to be silent admiration. There is nothing exceptional about figures of 10-1-44-1. But in bowling those overs, Jasprit Bumrah made jaws drop for the way he made batsmen struggle to put bat on ball on a day when willow dominated leather.
Twitter went quickly abuzz with notes of acknowledgement.
“Bumrah was outstanding in the end,” wrote VVS Laxman. “Outstanding spell. World No 1 for a reason,” read one from Yuvraj Singh. “The best death bowler India has ever produced?” asked Aakash Chopra. There were many not so famous names, posting words of appreciation.
It was all that and more. In the five overs he bowled in the last 10, when England had wickets in hand and Ben Stokes was making a mess of Mohammed Shami’s economy rate, Bumrah bowled three dot balls in each of over numbers 43, 46 and 50. One more could have been added to the last one had the batsmen not run a bye. There was one four against him in this phase, off an edge.
Batsmen study each and every bowler these days and a lot of research goes into devising methods of scoring. Having been a constant headache for a few years, Bumrah has also had his bowling dissected. They realise that hitting him in front of the wicket is difficult, so they try to use his pace by playing him from inside the crease, bringing different types of scoops into play.
England’s batsmen tried those. Stokes was having a day when everything he tried came off. But against Bumrah nothing worked. It seemed as if he was reading the batsman’s mind and pre-empting what they were going to do. If they moved outside off, he changed his line.
When they moved deeper inside the crease, he went a few inches fuller. It was a display of brains and brawn, considering that almost everything was happening at over 140 kmph.
In a match with few takeaways on the bowling front, Bumrah was India’s saving grace. It may not have mattered in the end, but those who saw are likely to remember the show. The Gavaskars and Vaughans included.