Melbourne: Each time Jasprit Bumrah bowls, he forces everyone watching to examine the preconceptions of the prototypical fast bowler. His run up is funny, the action — at first glance — isn’t repeatable, he isn’t exactly a physical specimen either but somehow, with the ball, he takes logic, the pitch and even the batters out of the equation.
We’ve seen him do this all series. He runs in, the crowd roars and the Aussies quake in their boots. But it never gets old. It never will. It never can. On Sunday, he cast a spell over the Melbourne Cricket Ground once again.
We thought the first spell was good. Everything in the channel. Everything in place. Everything challenging the batter. How Australia didn’t lose wickets was a mystery because Usman Khawaja and Sam Konstas played and missed more than they actually put bat on ball.
Konstas, for one, put the ramps and scoops away. He looked shaky; he looked like a player feeling every ounce of the pressure the world’s best fast bowler was piling on him. The 19-year-old backs himself, but this was a Bumrah still hurting from the first spell (6-2-38-0) in the first innings.
After torturing the teenager for a while, he got one to come back in off a good length and go between bat and pad to crash into middle-stump. It didn’t end there. When Virat Kohli was dismissed in the first innings, Konstas gestured towards the crowd, asking them to make some noise. Bumrah didn’t forget that and celebrated the wicket in much the same way.
Very few batters in international cricket have a hold over Bumrah and this was his way of showing Konstas who’s the boss. Round 1 to Konstas. Round 2, very clearly, to Bumrah.
From there on, Australia tightened the screws and reached 80 for two soon after lunch. Then, Mohammed Siraj helped India gets its foot in the door when he got Steve Smith (13) to chase a wide, full delivery and wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant snapped it up.
Birthday boy Travis Head, Australia’s best batter in the series, was in next, and given how he bats, if he stayed in long enough India would suffer. But skipper Rohit Sharma sensed the moment and brought Bumrah back into the attack. His bowling figures at that point read 10-1-24-1.
This is when it all began. Marnus Labuschagne took a single off the first ball of Bumrah’s 11th over. The next ball was from around the wicket, angled into Head and the left-hander obliged by flicking it straight to Nitish Reddy at midwicket. It was Bumrah 200th Test wicket, and of all the great bowlers who have reached the milestone, he was the only one to do it at an average of less than 20.
That brought Mitch Marsh to the middle, and he is low on runs and confidence. And it didn’t help facing Bumrah. He survived three balls before edging to Pant.
It felt like every ball bowled by someone else was a chance for the Aussies and everyone at the stadium to regain their breath. Then, the next Bumrah over began.
This time Labuschagne was on strike. He defended the first three deliveries before taking a three off the fourth ball. This brought Alex Carey on strike, and he had scored some good runs in the series. But none of that matters to Bumrah. A dot ball later, Carey was walking back — a back of length delivery clipped the pad before crashing into the stumps. Australia were reduced to 91/6 and India were looking at the very real possibility of a win.
Bumrah’s next over was when Labuschagne, who had already played 86 balls, decided that he was going to shield Pat Cummins from the pacer. The first ball was hit to midwicket but the batters didn’t run. The second was blocked. The third, fourth and fifth were left alone.
Rohit couldn’t keep Bumrah on forever and this tiny little spell that seemed to last so much longer read: 3-1-4-3. From start to finish, it was something that kept the Aussies hopping: “1W…W…3.W……”.
The spell got India into a position from where they could have finished the Aussie innings off in quick time. And it would have gone that way if Yashasvi Jaiswal, at gully, had managed to hold on to the straightforward chance offered by Labuschagne. He put it down and the batter went on to add 24 more runs.
On Sunday, Bumrah had nine spells in all. Some as short as an over, some longer. But each time Rohit turned to his star bowler, the 31-year-old was ready to step up. Everybody talks about Bumrah’s magic deliveries and skill but his relentlessness is often overlooked. He is at the batters all the time, even when the pitch is seemingly doing nothing, and that builds pressure; pressure that ultimately can lead to a breakdown.
In this day and age, given enough time, you should be able to break a bowler down. But how do you stop something that you don’t see coming. He has a plan for every batter and when he builds up a head of steam, you know you’ve got a locomotive coming and the only hope for survival is to get out of the way.
The spell brought back memories of his 6/33 at this venue in 2018. The wickets then had come through a bouncer, three searing full deliveries, one slower yorker, and a late away-seamer from good length. One thought that will be tough to match but then he came pretty close on Sunday.
