Harbhajan Singh reacts to the comments from Botham and Holding over Bumrah's inswinger

The Indian bowlers dominated the opposition batsmen in the ongoing fourth Test in Southampton on the first day. Despite losing the toss on a good pitch, the visitors bundled out England for just 246 runs. The hostile pace attack consistently bowled in good areas but one delivery which stood out was Jasprit Bumrah’s inswinger to Keaton Jennings which surprised everyone. While many feel that the bowler has developed the variation just now, Harbhajan Singh believes that the youngster has it in him for a long time.

Bumrah set up Jennings nicely by bowling a set of outswingers which he as leaving comfortably. But then one jagged back in suddenly to which the left-hander shouldered his arms and was hit on the pads in front of the stumps. The key here was the bowler didn’t change his action much and didn’t let Jennings know that he has bowled the inswinger.

Legends have their say

The likes of Ian Botham and Michael Holding were immensely impressed with Bumrah and felt that the youngster developed the delivery on England tour itself as they had never seen him bowling such way. “That’s a delivery that Bumrah has developed in the last one week. It’s unbelievable that he could do that. I never saw him bowling that delivery in the Nottingham Test and before that,” Botham said while speaking to the Times of India.

Even Holding was perplexed and felt bad for the batsman as he felt that how can one read that the bowler is bowling a variation when he isn’t changing his action much. “Is it possible for the batsman to read the seam position when the bowler is steaming in at that pace?” he said.

Bhajji ridicules both

Harbhajan Singh, however, ridiculed Botham and Holding and reminded them of a similar delivery Bumrah bowled to get rid of Chris Gayle in 2016 during the ICC World T20. “You guys have a very poor cricket memory. Go and take a look at the delivery with which he got Chris Gayle in the 2016 T20 World Cup semifinal. When he was bowling with the white ball, he always had that delivery, just that he didn’t use it too frequently,” he said.

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