Jasprit Bumrah’s first year in international cricket

Let’s turn the clock back to 2013-14. India play an ODI today. India bowl first and new ball bowlers have failed to make early inroads. Spinners have gone through the middle overs without bowling unerring lines and lengths. Cometh the 40th over, skipper MS Dhoni is looking around the park. He has little choice but to back his frontline seamers.

He throws the ball saying, “Come on Man!! you are my bowler. Isko yorker daal” (Bowl him a Yorker). Bowler gets his length wrong. The delivery is a full toss on pads and batsman has dispatched it into the crowd. Dhoni calls another bowler, sets the field, asks him to bowl a Yorker again. He bowls a length ball right in the slot and it sails over long on fence.

The opposition scores around 120 runs in last 10 overs and India are again looking at Virat Kohli to chase this daunting total down when they come out to bat. Dhoni has tried all the tricks in his bag to stop the onslaught but the inability of the bowlers to execute the plans has let him down yet again.

Death bowling has always been India’s Achilles heel. Till 2011 Dhoni could always bank on Zaheer Khan as India’s go-to man when it came to death bowling, for he was a gem with the new as well as old ball. Zaheer had a good Yorker and could hoodwink batsmen with subtle variations and change in pace. But after Zak’s retirement Team India hadn’t found a copper-bottomed death bowler.

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23 January 2016.. A star was born in Indian cricket!! Jasprit Bumrah, a 22-year-old lanky fast bowler from Ahmedabad, Gujarat donned the blue jersey for the very first time. He first arrived on the scene during the IPL 2013 when Ricky Ponting picked him for the first match of Mumbai Indians’ IPL campaign. He raised eyebrows with his unique bowling action and returned with figures of 3/32 on IPL debut. In the 2014 season he showcased his death bowling skills for Mumbai Indians to a great extent bowling in tandem with the great Lasith Malinga.

India vs Australia 5th ODI, Sydney: India had already lost the series 4-0, courtesy their death bowling. Not included in the original squad Bumrah was called up for T20Is as replacement of Mohammed Shami. His first scalp was Steven Smith, the big fish in Australia team. Bumrah came back in the death and bowled impeccable Yorkers and even knocked over James Faulkner who has got a knack of belting it and staying not out. With returns of 2/40 in 10 overs he had made his teammates believe that they can chase win the match and they did manage to get over the line.

In the next few months during the course of India’s World T20 2016 campaign, Bumrah kept doing this for Dhoni on a consistent basis. In the historic India-Bangladesh encounter at Bangalore his role was crucial in giving Hardik Pandya as many runs as he can to defend in the last over in a low scoring thriller.

He emerged as the leading wicket-taker in short tour of Zimbabwe and had a successful series against New Zealand at home. Within no time he was the No.2 T20I bowler, just shy of Imran Tahir. He made giant strides in international cricket. His performances against England this year were far from his best but still acceptable in an overall high scoring series.

With the emergence of Jasprit Bumrah, it can be said that Team India has come one step closer to cracking the death bowling code!!

Career Stats:

ODIs- 11 Matches, 21 Wickets, Economy 4.89

T20s- 21 Matches, 28 Wickets, Economy 6.63