Bumrah’s scintillating performance blows entire series wide open

In being able to reverse-swing both ways, so quickly and so indecipherably, Bumrah has world-class batsmen, like Joe Root, on toast

It was going to be England against India’s spinners this winter. But conventional thoughts went out of the window when the tourists’ batting was cracked open by the most unconventional fast bowler Test cricket has ever seen, Jasprit Bumrah.
Nobody has generated such pace off a run-up that consists of nothing more than a few shuffles and strides. But that was all the space that the street could offer when Bumrah was growing up in Ahmedabad.
Zak Crawley will be an older and wiser batsman when England go into the third Test at one-all. Ollie Pope brought England’s house down in the Ashes Test at Lord’s last summer by getting too giddy, and Crawley did the same in Vizag: only one indiscreet stroke, but it was enough to open the door of England’s dressing room, and Bumrah burst in with six wickets for 45.
Bumrah has made Joe Root look like the newest member of England’s batting line-up, not the most experienced. Maybe Root had too much bowling to do in Abu Dhabi and Hyderabad to devote as much time as normal to his main area of expertise, but Bumrah’s reverse swing in these first two Tests has unravelled Root’s batting.
India’s other two pace bowlers in this series Mohammed Siraj and Mukesh Kumar have reverse swung the ball, into right-handers. What distinguishes Bumrah is that he can reverse swing both ways, so quickly and so indecipherably that he has a world-class batsman on toast: this was the eighth time Bumrah has dismissed Root in 12 Tests. He has not dismissed anyone else so often.
Root has been falling over himself, almost literally, to keep out Bumrah’s reverse swing. At Hyderabad he was pinned lbw by the ball that reversed in. In the second Test, Root was intent on keeping out that reverse-swinger, by use of his bat, and was thereby seduced into playing at the ball that reversed away from him. If his brain had been unscrambled, and if Bumrah were less than 140kph, Root would have calmly shouldered arms and left it.
Pat Cummins, Australia’s Test captain, embodies the coaching ideal of fast bowling. Long, accelerating run-up, strong leading shoulder and fast right arm, and every ball back of a length around off stump, getting whatever there is out of the pitch. Bumrah can not only match him, with his abbreviated run-up and the periscope that becomes his whirling right arm, but even surpass him because he can make the pitch irrelevant.
Whereas Cummins makes a virtue out of his lack of variation, crushing his opponent into submission, Bumrah has all the tricks precisely because he grew up on some dead surfaces and, to make a living, had to learn all the T20 skills quickly. Not only inswing and outswing, both conventional and reverse, but an off-cutter with almost no perceptible change of wrist position, and that yorker which wiped out Pope’s stumps.
Jasprit Bumrah. WOW. 🤯#INDvENG pic.twitter.com/gpXPwH6ShB
Yorkers had gone out of fashion – they were not even used by Yorkshire fast bowlers, which was the origin of the name, after Darren Gough had retired – until T20 made them essential, to stop batsmen backing away to give themselves room. Signed by Mumbai Indians, Bumrah had the benefit of the tuition of arguably the most accurate of all bowlers who have delivered the reverse-inswinging and toe-crushing yorker, Lasith Malinga.
Pope had gone into this Test in the form of his life. Anything less and he would not have been able to remove his toes from the line of fire. At least he did not let his head fall over to the offside like Root but was looking to move his eyes towards the line of the ball.
Bang, bang, bang: Root, Pope and Jonny Bairstow when he too fished outside off stump: England’s middle order not exactly taken out of the equation but adding up to only 53 runs. In the Hyderabad Test, for the losing side, Bumrah had taken six for 69. In his Test career so far he has taken 152 at 20.28, and no fast bowler who has taken 50 Test wickets since Frank Tyson has averaged less.
Bumrah had to nurse his right elbow straight during his series-turning spells – and maybe the best of coaches could at some stage have modified his action so that he did not put quite such a strain on it and his back which has required major surgery. Had he been fit, India would have had a much better chance of defending their modest total in the last 50-over World Cup final.
It is one of cricket’s longest-standing conventions that the ideal bowling partnership is a right-arm fast bowler and a left-arm spinner, and now it is Kuldeep Yadav benefiting from Bumrah asking so many questions. James Anderson has made things happen for England. Bumrah has made them happen 10kph faster.