Pune Test: New Zealand get throw-down specialist to ape Jasprit Bumrah’s action at nets | Cricket News
Midway through their practice session on Wednesday, some of New Zealand’s batsmen gestured their throw-down specialist to fling the ball from a more side-arm angle. “A little lower, a little lower, that side…” one of them instructed. But the burly specialist’s faithful attempts to reproduce the whip-crack action of Jasprit Bumrah manifested as wild, wide balls that pitched halfway down the pitch.
The side-arm comedy revealed that even on a potential turner, where India’s gang of spinners daunt, New Zealand batsmen are fearful of Bumrah too. Be the Pune strip unfold as a turner, semi-turner, or a non-turner, Bumrah looms and lurks, as inevitably as the cycles of the solar system, his capacity to shape the game’s destiny immune to the vagaries of weather, pitch and the reputation of the batsmen. Be it with the new ball, old-ball, semi-old or semi-new ball, Bumrah could scythe through batting line-ups in one inspired burst and bend the game’s script to his whim. To bounce back from the Bengaluru slip-up, India would hope their blockbuster seamer is stirred and primed. Inversely, Tom Latham and his batting firm would know that to outlast the spinners, they have to survive Bumrah first.
In Bengaluru, the visiting batsmen feared him more than the spinners. Not because the ball swung under clouds, or because the cracks had not yet evolved into craters, but because Bumrah brought something more indefinable—more heart, more heat and more will. In the entire game, only Ravindra Jadeja bowled more balls than him—just four mere bowls, though. No one intimidated as much as Bumrah did. The prospect of an event lurked every ball. He gives the fans not just hope, but he makes them dream.
But whenever he had been unleashed at home, Bumrah had overshadowed the spinners and conjured match and series-defining concerts of high-class seam bowling. (BCCI)
On the fifth morning, he lbw-ed Tom Latham off his second ball to sow the seeds of an unlikely heist. He revved up hostility, bent the ball both ways, seared in off the eight pace run-up as though he would keep bowling throughout the session. After eight overs of purgatorial fire, New Zealand could breath. On a luckier day, he would have found more rewards for his output—the margins were that fine.
Only one third of his Tests have come on home soil, so that he could be conserved for important overseas assignments where his unearthly skills could transform India to a condition-proof beast. But whenever he had been unleashed at home—in 11 mere Tests—he had overshadowed the spinners and conjured match and series-defining concerts of high-class seam bowling. He has snaffled 47 wickets at an average of 15.97, producing a wicket every 34th ball, often strikes that recast games. Look no further than the England series at the start of the year, when India demystified Bazball.
He was the third highest wicket-taker (19), behind Ravi Ashwin (26) and Tom Hartley (22), but played a Test fewer than either. None took wickets as frequently (every 33rd ball), only James Anderson was thriftier (3.09 and 3.06), and none had the knack of seizing big moments or construing magical balls as Bumrah did. His reverse-swing-aided spell in Visakhapatnam was not only hall of fame stuff, but was a pendulum-swinging moment of the series. A game down, with the first-Test destroyer Ollie Pope batting fluently, the sun panning down, he created a moment he only could. A sinisterly tailing-in yorker that beat the eyes, hands and responses of Pope, flattening in its 89kph-sting two stumps. It’s the art of distorting stumps that fascinated a teenaged Bumrah to aim for the skirting boards at home and try not to wake his sleeping mother. It’s the art that he is still devoted to.
Subtler and less spectacular was the entrapping of Joe Root, the England talisman. He tied down Root with four dots and then uncorked the killer blow: angled in, seam beautifully upright, jagged away, forced the prod and the outside edge from Root. You don’t destroy world-class batsmen as smoothly as that. In Hyderabad, he nailed him with a nip-backer that struck his pads. It’s a duel—between the batting and bowling royalty of our times—Bumrah has dominated. In 32 meetings across formats, the India seamer had consumed him 13 times. In the red-hot spell, he devoured Jonny Bairstow with his wits. He set him up with the inswing-outswing double-bluff. Bairstow reacted by staying inside the line, worried about the inswinger. But Bumrah surprised him with a wide length ball that he could’t resist poking, and edging.
That six-wicket feat in Visakhapatnam tells you all you want to know about Bumrah’s subcontinent deception. He finds conventional swing ans seam movement with the new ball, reverse swing with the old nut. When he can’t coax either, he finds just a hint of shape, mixes the angles, manipulates the width of the crease and deploys his cutters and slower balls. His album of slower-ball wickets has a cult-value in itself.
No Indian seamer has had as profound an influence as Bumrah in home conditions. Indeed the likes of Kapil Dev, Javagal Srinath, Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma and Mohammed Shami were impenetrable on their days, but few have lived in the opposition batsmen’s head as Bumrah had, so as to ask their throw-down specialist to impersonate the impossible act that Bumrah is.
