Like most of the other top-class quicks who have been game-changers for their teams, particularly in Test cricket, Jasprit Bumrah too can gauge conditions and read the situation as well as the batsmen’s minds.
That searing inswinging yorker, his go-to delivery with which he had uprooted a set Ollie Pope’s stumps in the Visakhapatnam Test against England earlier in February, will surely go down as one of the best balls of 2024. The yorker aside, there are other elements too that set Bumrah apart among the current crop of quicks.
“Given the unique action that Boom (Bumrah) has, if you have someone releasing the ball around 20 centimetres further than any other bowler’s release point, the distance becomes shorter. So when the distance is shorter, the batsman is caught up in the air because the ball hurries onto him.
“If you look at the way his body position is, it’s kind of right there (a tad wide off the stumps) and it’s a very freaky kind of action he has. It’s an action you either have or you don’t. He also has a hyperextension (in his elbow) and all that can actually generate the pace that really matters,” former India bowling coach Paras Mhambrey explained to The Telegraph on Thursday.
Mhambrey also pointed out how well Bumrah worked on taking the ball away from a right-handed batter and bringing it in to a left-hander, making proper use of the angles at the crease to leave batters confused. For the last five to six years, the 30-year-old has been diligently working on that aspect.
Unconventional slower
While bowling the slower ball, the majority of the pacers bowl it from the back of the hand. That’s not the case with Bumrah, though.
To effect the dismissals of both Bangladesh’s Mushfiqur Rahim recently in the Kanpur Test and Pakistan wicketkeeper-batter Mohammad Rizwan in last year’s ODI World Cup clash in Ahmedabad, Bumrah’s last-second push with the ring finger before releasing the ball was key in extracting movement and castling both batsmen.
“It’s more like a dip in that ball,” Mhambrey said.
“He generally gets a lot of forward rotation like a spinner, and those rotations actually dip the ball.
“He gets a lot of bowled dismissals through the slower one. We saw how he got
Rahim out in the Bangladesh Test or Rizwan last year. The way he releases it is not easy to pick. The fluidness and dexterity of his wrist play a significant role here.”
Angular seam
Mohammed Shami, who had been Bumrah’s new-ball partner for a fair amount of time till sustaining an ankle injury, is also known as an exponent of superb use of the seam. Bumrah uses it a little differently but that’s as effective as that of Shami.
“See, Shami’s is a dead-straight seam. But in Boom’s case, I think his seam is a little more angular. So, it’s not dead straight but slightly pointed.
“If he wants to take it away from the right-hander, you’ll see his wrist working very smartly. The ball and its seam facing upright is slightly tilted towards the first slip. He uses the wrist to guide the change of the angle of the seam and hence, he gets both kinds of swing.
“That helps Boom get more swing than Shami. Also, he doesn’t bowl the wobble seam like (Mohammed) Siraj does.
“Shami doesn’t swing the ball that much. He’s more a hit-the-deck kind of bowler, but his dead-straight seam is challenging for a batsman as you don’t know which ball will come in and which one will move away. So, Boom and Shami have a different approach, but both are equally effective,” Mhambrey said.
