Two evenings before the Super-8 match against South Africa in Ahmedabad a fortnight ago, Jasprit Bumrah opted to bowl in an empty net, with two boots placed on either side of the batting crease. He kept hurling yorkers for a good 45 minutes. It was a drill he had started in Dharamshala during the T20I series against South Africa last December.Mohammed Siraj arrived at the practice area to bat in the adjacent nets, walked up to Bumrah and said, “ Aapko kya zarurat hain yorker practice karne ka? Aap toh beech raat ko neend se uthke bhi yorker maar sakte ho (Why do you need to practice bowling yorkers? You can get up from sleep in the middle of the night and land those yorkers)!” Bumrah smiled, nailed another perfect yorker which displaced one of the boots, and said, “ Bahut zarurat hain bhai (it’s very important).”
At 32, after multiple injuries and many match-winning performances across formats for over a decade, Bumrah still puts himself through drills that a 16-year-old would do at academy level. It just speaks of his constant hunger to be the best and remain at the top.Bumrah has been bowling up to the stumps and the boots in the nets throughout this World Cup campaign. One of his yorkers even landed on the left toe of Ishan Kishan ahead of the match against Namibia last month in Delhi.
Match by match
On Thursday night, in a tense semifinal against England in Mumbai, every yorker sent down by Bumrah was on point, helping to choke England’s chase.Finding another gear in tense situations, on the biggest stage, is nothing new for Bumrah. His spell of 2/20 in the last T20 World Cup final against South Africa was T20 bowling perfection. In this edition, he has shown he can improve on it.Thursday’s spell of 1/33 in a match that saw a match aggregate of 499 runs, and that too with a lot of dew present at the Wankhede Stadium, was the performance of a bowler in supreme control of his craft. That captain Suryakumar Yadav chose to bowl Bumrah out in the 18th over, when Jacob Bethell was on a rampage, proved he is still the No. 1 option when the Indian team is under pressure.
Bumrah in T20Is
Bumrah usually wears a coy smile after the perfect execution of his deliveries, be it the dipping slower balls, the zippy bouncers or the toe-crushing yorkers. He has also mastered the art of mentally distancing himself from ‘outside’ chatter and remains detached from any possible criticism. He has looked cold-blooded in the way he has gone about his job in this World Cup.India came into the tournament flaunting Varun Chakravarthy’s mystery spin as the trump card, but it is Bumrah who has covered up for him and risen to the occasion. It didn’t come as a surprise when England captain Harry Brook said, “Bumrah is a very good bowler, arguably the best of all time at the minute. He’s been a very good bowler for a long time.”Bumrah knows he is the most complete pacer going around. He also knows that to maintain that, he has to train like a rookie every day.
