There has always been something different about Jasprit Bumrah. And being different has paid off for him in his career so far. As it did in Dubai against Delhi Capitals on Thursday night when Mumbai Indians reached yet another final.
When he was a kid, a short and lean one at that, seniors would not believe that he was a quick bowler. But when he was given a chance, all it needed were a couple of deliveries to make them go: ‘wow, where did that come from?’
When he played for Gujarat in a T20 match for the first time in March 2013, his life changed again because he was different. Because John Wright thought that too, when he saw him bowl for the first time in a T20 match between Gujarat and Mumbai. Here’s a guy who was not ordinary, here’s someone who could bowl fast yorkers at will, someone who the batsmen will have a hard time picking.
Those yorkers that caught the eye of Wright that day, came in the last couple of overs of the innings. Like yorkers usually do. That’s where they belong. In the morbidly named death overs in a match. That’s when bowlers have the rhythm behind them to execute them. That is when, cricketing convention states, they are the most significant weapons.
Not if you are Bumrah. Not if you have the confidence to even think of bowling a yorker in your first spell. Not if you have the talent to get it right with a brand new ball. Not if you have the courage to bowl it in your second delivery of the night, to the opponent’s star batsman, knowing full well that if you miss it, it is going for four with only two fielders placed outside the ring.
Bumrah is different.
“The execution of Bumrah’s yorker to Shikhar was (laughs) ABSOLUTELY first-class. If he was going to miss it by a few inches either way, it was probably a low full toss that goes for four,” Ricky Ponting, Bumrah’s captain in his first IPL match and Delhi Capitals’ coach on Thursday night, said after the match.
When he made his Indian Premier League debut with this awkward-looking action, he was different too. He made people sit up and take notice again immediately. Not just because of his run-up and delivery stride, but because of the heart he showed to bounce back after being hit for three fours by Virat Kohli in his first over. Off the fifth ball he bowled, Bumrah dismissed Kohli for his first wicket and celebrated like any young pacer making his debut would: like an angry young man.
And, when he started out, he did get angry easily. He was as aggressive as pacers can be, bowling bouncers after he got hit for boundaries, sledging batsmen and what not. He was angry after Virat Kohli hit those fours. “He had hit me for three boundaries in that over and so I was angry,” Bumrah was quoted as saying after the match. “I am always like this on the field,” he added and it showed in his celebrations.
But this is where now, once again, he is different. On Thursday, in Qualifier 1 of IPL 2020, after bowling the stunning yorker to Dhawan in his very first over, Bumrah smiled. That is what he does now. That is what he did after missing the stump by a hair’s breadth with a yorker against Jos Buttler, that is what he did after nailing the delivery against Dhawan.
As a superhero once said, maybe Bumrah’s secret is being angry all the time. But not quite showing it to the rest of us. To bowl a yorker like that in your first over is skill that goes beyond comprehension of thousands of hard-working cricketers who toil day in and day out in the nets.
But Bumrah’s brilliance is that his game goes beyond the yorker too. When Delhi Capitals were starting to show some fight through Marcus Stoinis’ well-compiled half century, Rohit Sharma turned to Bumrah. Of course, he did. And running in, in the 16th over, Bumrah produced a length ball that beat the inside edge of the Australian batsman like it was the first session of a Test match. Not a yorker at the death, but a good length delivery that lived up to the adjective.
Nothing in cricket is as exciting as fast bowling of this quality. Bumrah finished with figures of 4/14 in a high-pressure match, his best ever in T20 cricket. As the modern-day saying goes, pace is pace, yaar.
“The day you feel satisfied, is the day your progress stops,” Bumrah had told Cricbuzz in an interview.
And what he has shown in this IPL, the hunger is still very much there. The drive to make a difference, and not just be different, is there. The accuracy and control and the ability to bounce back from a bad performance, are all there. Much to the delight of his captains and the dismay of batsmen.
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