Mumbai: What’s a usual Mumbai Indians’ bowling highlights reel like? It features plenty of Jasprit Bumrah splattering the zing bails with his pin point yorkers. When he’s not cleaning up batters, he’s still confounding them with his perfectly disguised slower balls.
This season, however, has been far from business as usual for MI. Bumrah simply can’t get himself in the highlights package. When he’s there, it’s for the wrong reasons: at the receiving end of young Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s pickup six, or being pulled to the stands by Shreyas Iyer.
In the 114 balls he’s bowled this season, Bumrah doesn’t even have a strike rate. That’s because he simply hasn’t bowled anyone over. As rare as a chilly Mumbai winter, Bumrah has yet to pick up a wicket in the five matches so far.
A lot of this may be down to the great fast bowler being short of gas, all of which he spent in helping India defend the T20 World Cup title, days ahead of IPL 2026.
MI head coach Mahela Jayawardene thought as much when quizzed about Bumrah’s performance. “I think initially because he had a slight niggle which he came with from the World Cup. We wanted to build him up over the last few games,” he said after the Punjab Kings match.
The MI coach, though, wasn’t unduly concerned. “His speeds have gone up, we’ve looked at all that. So he’s very comfortable,” he said. “I think once he starts taking wickets, (they) might not be able to stop him. So we just need to back that.”
Even in the middle of this dry spell, Bumrah has been MI’s most economical bowler (ER 8.63). That may be well above his career economy rate (7.29), but what makes matters worse is the lack of support for the premier bowler. Every other pacer in the MI ranks has been conceding over 10 runs per over. They have been especially poor in the Powerplay.
A case in point was the MI-PBKS clash on Thursday where Arshdeep Singh made the batters sway to his swing even as MI’s swing specialist Deepak Chahar found none. Even Hardik Pandya with the ball looks like a pale shadow of his World Cup self. Bumrah’s regular new-ball partner Trent Boult has performed so far below his usual standards that he became the first casualty when the overseas quota needed tweaking.
MI’s bowling shortcomings have added to Bumrah’s burden. Usually, when all seems lost in a match situation, MI’s unorthodox bowling hand finds a way. At his best, Bumrah would have broken open the match for MI in the 6th over after Allah Gazanfar had delivered two early blows. Or made his presence felt in the 13th over, when he was brought back to bounce out Shreyas Iyer and brought the hosts back into the match. The reverse happened. Iyer smashed him out of sight over deep mid-wicket as if he were facing any other bowler.
What a less-than-best Bumrah required from his fellow bowlers was for them to raise the bar, allowing him to build his workload into the tournament. Not to be thrust with match-turning challenges. Lest, his workload thresholds are crossed.
Only the MI think tank would know if there are any red flags with his fitness. If this is only a form and rhythm issue, Bumrah is too good a bowler not to be able to sort things out. Just the way his fellow India pacer Ashdeep Singh was able to in opposing colours at the Wankhede.
Train when no one’s watching, they say. That’s what Arshdeep did in a pre-match training session, this week, at a net on the sidelines with a few cones and two stumps. A little bubble he created and operated in to regain his bowling rhythm, swing, precision yorkers too.
“It goes back to one of the training sessions with Ricky (Ponting) where I told him the ball wasn’t coming out of the hand the way I would like. He told me how I was expecting too much out of myself and not keeping it simple. You are coming off a World Cup high and it wasn’t easy to maintain that high all the time. It was about having fun,” Arshdeep said at the presentation on Thursday. “I had a nice spot bowling session before the match. That’s when I felt the ball coming out well.”
Arshdeep was the pick of the bowlers with figures of 3/22. In contrast, Bumrah finished with 0/41. Rest is not an option for marquee players in the unrelenting IPL months where action never stops. Somewhere in this constant travel-play-travel routine, Bumrah will have to find the energy for a spot bowling session like Arshdeep. If that sparks a Eureka moment, it could well bring the pace ace and with him, MI, back to life.
