Mumbai: “I know fear is an obstacle for some people, but it is an illusion to me,” Michael Jordan once said.
Without Jordan’s swagger, Jasprit Bumrah exemplifies that sentiment through his actions, over and over again. The ace paceman showed no fear when Indian captain Suryakumar Yadav signaled him to bowl in the 18th over of the Thursday night thriller against England at the Wankhede.
When the captain calls for Bumrah-time early in a crunch situation, it’s usually with the expectation to shut the match down. And he unfailingly delivers.
In circumstances similar to the 2024 T20 World Cup final, when South Africa needed 22 runs in 18 balls while chasing 177, then captain Rohit Sharma took the gamble to deploy his trump card. Here, England required 45 runs in 18 balls, chasing 254. But India had a sixth bowler’s over remaining, the pitch was a belter and England had a batter in Jacob Bethell inching towards a breathtaking century. The visitors were in with a fair chance.
By this time, the fully invested Wankhede crowd was well aware they needed to give a helping hand. A jam-packed stadium including glitterati from sport and entertainment to political heavyweights, but more importantly cricket regulars, began lifting India’s bowling talisman.
Bumrah handed his cap to the umpire in a business-as-usual manner and set out to complete the assigned task: win India the match.
India may have liked a wicket and Bumrah could have tried more of his tricks. But he was clear: a well-executed defensive over would work equally well. So an over full of sharp yorkers it was. Some of them were dipping full tosses, but English batters, not even Bethell in a blistering mood, gathered the courage to attempt to line up under any of them. A six-run over in a contest where even 253 wasn’t looking safe was breathtakingly good. Earlier, he had delivered the 16th over which went for only 8 runs. The Mumbai crowd gave Bumrah a standing ovation he deserved.
A unified approval of thundering applause for a successfully executed over that didn’t produce a wicket. It showed how far the T20 game had come and that those watching were up to speed.
India’s smiling assassin delivered twelve balls of pin-point death-over precision to ensure Sanju Samson’s batting brilliance did not go to waste.
“All credit goes to Jasprit Bumrah,” Samson said after India beat England by seven runs. “I think the world-class bowler, the once-in-a-generation bowler, I think that’s what he delivered today. This (man of the match award) should go to him actually. If he didn’t bowl that way in the death overs, I would not be standing here. So all credit goes to the bowlers, how they backed themselves in the tough conditions.”
In pressure moments, like the one India encountered in the semi-final, Bumrah nonchalantly puts his head down – his mental processing masked by his poker face – and goes about his task, the weaker opponent often wilts under pressure. Most teams prefer to give respect to his skills, lest he accounts for a wicket and pegs them back further.
England did exactly that and in hindsight, left themselves with too much to get in the final two overs. Hardik Pandya delivered a miserly penultimate over to all but clinch the deal. The anticipation of Bumrah, his impending entry, becomes a significant part of the final analysis in a run chase.
India without Bumrah, despite all their batting riches, no longer remains the same opponent. The 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia was a case in point.
This World Cup alone, Bumrah’s dot ball percentage in the death overs, where dot balls often matter more than a wicket, is vastly better (41.6% to 35.3%) than other right-arm pacers. He is so much more economical (7.4 to 9.9) too.
Besides, match-ups become a redundant conversation when it comes to using Bumrah at the business end of an innings. Left or right, Bumrah is the right choice.
It’s Bumrah’s bowling arsenal that often forces opponents onto the back foot. He isn’t just an archetypal death-over specialist; he is also a fully endowed Test match bowler. He rings in those skills on days when he is handed the licence to go all out with the new ball. For the middle overs, he has the slower ball that holds time. Batters know it’s coming, they simply don’t know when and how. Ask Roston Chase. Ask Harry Brook.
“Most bowlers give you some little sign — a shrug of the shoulder, a flick of the shirt — something that tells you what’s coming. Like Andre Agassi wrote about picking Boris Becker’s serve from the position of his tongue. But Bumrah gives you nothing,” Sunil Gavaskar recently said. “There is no change in run-up, no change in action. And because he goes wide off the crease, you think it’s coming in — and it moves away. That’s why he’s been so devastating in all three formats.”
There’s one team though which has in recent times bucked the trend and dared to attack Bumrah. That was only five weeks back in the last T20I played between the two sides at Thiruvananthapuram. That’s when Finn Allen and Daryll Mitchell went after him to hand the pacer his most expensive figures of 0/58. The visitors would draw confidence from that for Sunday’s final. The fear is that Bumrah would have cataloged his rare off-day in his memory bank too.
