Not since the days of Richard Hadlee has one fast bowler carried an attack like Bumrah has in this Border-Gavaskar series. At 1-1, it’s time for India’s other bowlers to step up
Alagappan Muthu21-Dec-2024There is a weight on Jasprit Bumrah’s shoulders. It’s called India. He seems happy to bear it.”We don’t want to get into that mindset where we are pointing fingers at each other,” he said in Brisbane, before adding, “We are in transition, so it’s my job to help the others.”Three Tests into the Border-Gavaskar series, Bumrah has been India’s highest wicket-taker in every single innings. Either outright or joint. He’s had a couple of highs with the bat too, saving them from following on and hoisting Nathan Lyon and Pat Cummins for sixes. He likes being on the other side of the 22 yards.Related
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When a question about India’s batting was put to him with a rider that he might not be the best person to ask about it, he said, “it’s interesting that you are questioning my batting ability so far. You should use Google and see who’s got the most number of runs in a Test over.”It is fitting that Melbourne, the venue of the fourth Test, was the scene of one of his most unplayable deliveries. Hosier Street. AC/DC Lane. Mayers Place. They were all merely brick and mortar once until people saw they could be more and did something about it. Street art has a tendency to come from out of nowhere, not unlike that slower ball to Shaun Marsh in 2018.Bumrah hasn’t had that one single moment in this series, but he has made a whole Test match bend to his will. India’s win in Perth after being bowled out for 150 is the reason they are still in contention to retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. That six-for in the first innings turned out to be just a start. He now has 21 wickets at an average of 10.90. The rest of India have 26 wickets at an average of 36.81. World XI at one end. Ilford seconds at the other.Richard Hadlee, about whom Graham Gooch made that quip, is the poster boy for the one-man army trope from a bowling perspective. He too was three times as good as the rest of his team-mates in the 1985-86 Trans-Tasman Trophy. This is the company Bumrah is keeping. He is providing a fast-bowling masterclass the quality of which has not been seen in 40 years.”You cannot expect Bumrah to bowl from both ends, from the morning through to the evening,” Rohit Sharma said at the end of the Adelaide Test. He is the crown jewel of this entire team, across formats. Losing him to a back injury made India look toothless in world tournaments. England whipped them out of the 2022 T20 World Cup by 10 wickets. Pakistan produced a similar margin of victory in the 2021 tournament.India have him fit now and he seems to have accessed an otherworldly kind of form. Fifteen of his 21 wickets are of batters in the top five of the Australian line-up, and the ease with which he has been getting through them has made their selectors do a bit of an about-turn. They picked Nathan McSweeney over Sam Konstas for this series, valuing his ability to stick around at the crease. His head-to-head against Bumrah (four dismissals for 15 runs in 66 balls) is part of the reason he’s been dropped from the squad.Usman Khawaja (4 for 17 in 71 balls), Marnus Labuschange (2 for 6 in 72 balls) and Steven Smith (3 for 20 in 54 balls) are vastly more experienced than McSweeney but even they are having problems against Bumrah. India should be making more of this advantage. Their support bowlers could be doing better to keep up the pressure on. Right now, they’re like release valves. Australia escaped to 447 in Brisbane after being 75 for 3 and 334 in Adelaide after being 103 for 3. The man who came in to bat at both those points had a fair bit to do with that. Travis Head is so hard to keep quiet.But that really is Bumrah’s foremost strength. He doesn’t devise his spells with the aim of taking a whole bunch of wickets. The priority, instead, is in denying the batter, starving him of runs until the very concept of them starts to feel far-fetched. The priority is, and always has been, discipline. It’s why he needed Rohit Sharma to whisper in his ear to try that slower ball to Marsh in 2018. He isn’t focused on magic. The magic just happens.Australia aren’t able to score runs off Bumrah even when they are meeting him confidently. Even their in-control responses are only fetching 2.92 runs an over. The other bowlers have been a different story and it is fairly easily explained – their threat can be replicated at the nets. Bumrah’s cannot. There is a comfort while facing the others. There is none facing Bumrah. India need to bridge the gap. They could afford to shift their focus to landing six balls on the same spot, especially when it is nice and hard and new, because this new Kookaburra is highly responsive and the pitches have been pretty friendly.Akash Deep did that in the first innings in Brisbane and was rather unlucky to come away with just one wicket. He was beating Smith’s bat repeatedly. India have made a good decision bringing him into their line-up. Mohammed Siraj will want to do better as well. He was dropped at home. He was demoted when the second new ball became available at the Gabba, although that could well be because he was not 100% and was bowling through injury. He has been targeted at every venue he has been to since giving that send-off to Head in the second Test and a packed MCG – tickets for Boxing Day are sold out – will test his ability to keep out the noise as well. He’s come through all that to pick up 13 wickets at 23.92, but his giving up runs at 3.73 an over has been a problem. Siraj hasn’t been able to hold his line and length consistently, he’s also lost a bit of pace, and he went to the former India bowling coach B Arun for help in finding it again. Additionally, after the confrontation with Head, he hasn’t really tried to engage with the batters, which he often does to fire himself up.Australia, meanwhile, have been able to turn not just to their big three quicks but also their bench, with Scott Boland proving to be an excellent luxury, to keep the pressure on India’s own faltering top order. They have the resources to be relentless. India clearly don’t. It’s why Bumrah had to slog through a seven-over spell with the new ball in Adelaide. He was also given extremely late notice in Brisbane, just before tea on day two, to come in and try to stem the run flow when Smith and Head were batting. Once-in-a-generation fast bowlers tend to pay the price for being once-in-a-generation by teams relying on them a little too much. They also have to live with a lot of individual success soured by team defeats. Fortunately, with this series still 1-1, India’s Ilford Seconds have a chance to do something about it.