There is no doubt about it now. We live in the age of Jasprit Bumrah, a man who seems all the more remarkable in an era when most bowlers are mere cannon fodder for batters firing on all cylinders all the time.
As former South African captain Faf du Plessis put it: ‘You just give him the ball and he wins you games… It’s like having a genie. You just rub the lamp and out comes Bumrah.’ (REUTERS)
Across formats, conditions, surfaces and circumstances, Bumrah’s normal is blinding brilliance, delivered with an inscrutable composure interrupted only by a wry smile or the occasional shy grin.
Calling him the greatest fast-bowler of all time may upset some, but one need only look at the statistics. In Tests, his 234 wickets have come at an average of 19.79, a best-of-all-time rate that puts him ahead of greats such as Wasim Akram, Allan Donald and Glenn McGrath, with only Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner and Curtly Ambrose anywhere in the vicinity. More astonishing, that he’s done it at an economy rate of 2.77 (only Malcolm Marshall was more miserly in the history of Tests) despite bowling at a time when batters score more heavily than ever.
Bumrah has the best economy rate for any bowler in ODIs in the last 10 years, and the best average. It’s the same for the T20s.
Let’s concede that “greatest of all time” is a childish exercise and let it go. That still makes him, on the basis of the statistics, the best bowler across all formats across the last decade; a man operating in a field of one.
When India were staring down the barrel in the semi-final against England, with the find of the tournament Jacob Bethel in the middle of a hitting frenzy and England needing 45 off 18 balls — a target looking easier and easier thanks to Bethel — Bumrah took charge of the 18th over and banged in three perfect yorkers, two hard-swinging low full tosses and one full-length ball. England could score only six off that over, and lost the match at that point.
Bumrah finished with figures of 1-33 in a match that saw 499 runs being scored. It must be lonely to be him.
In the final, he didn’t give New Zealand half a chance. He deployed, with great cunning, that ball that he has made his own: a dipping, slow off-cutter that no batter has managed to read coming off his hand, and which subsequently bends them into awkward shapes even as it slams into the stumps.Bumrah took all his four wickets with that ball, finishing with 4 for 15, the best bowling figures in a winning cause in a T20 World Cup final.
This was just him continuing where he left off at the last such tournament, in 2024, which India also won thanks in part to his preternatural abilities, choking teams when needed, picking up wickets when needed, with an economy rate of 4.17 that’s just ridiculous in a T20 tournament.
“Regardless of the format, you just give him the ball and he wins you games,” former South African captain Faf du Plessis has said. “It’s a superpower that any captain will dream of. It’s like having a genie. You just rub the lamp and out comes Bumrah.”
(Email Rudraneil Sengupta on rudraneil@ gmail.com. The views expressed are personal)
