Jasprit Bumrah bowls with fire at nets

Bengaluru, November 8

Ishan Kishan slumped to the field with a painful grunt as Jasprit Bumrah’s slightly short-of-length delivery hit his stomach. It took him a few minutes to recover and resume the training here today.

Ahead of their final league match against Netherlands here on Sunday, the Indian team returned to the field for an optional net session.

Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Mohammed Shami and Kuldeep Yadav restricted themselves to their hotel rooms while others trained at the Chinnaswamy stadium.

Shubman Gill was at his best, clobbering pacers Mohammed Siraj, Shardul Thakur and Prasidh Krishna into the stands. But the Indian opener had to restrain himself once Bumrah tested his skills with an assortment of slower balls and in the channel outside the off-stump.

It was an optional net session but the pacer did not drop his intensity even for a moment. The 20 minutes Bumrah bowled at nets offered an insight into his craftiness.

It is not eye-catching like Shami, who has hogged the limelight over the last fortnight owing to his 16-wicket burst over four matches.

Shami is an apex predator, zooming in on the stumps and hunting for wickets all the time. But Bumrah has a totally different philosophy, something that will thrill the connoisseurs more. He likes to build up pressure with dot balls and draw batsmen into mistakes.

A statistical nugget will help here: Bumrah has an economy of 3.65 across eight matches and it is the best among bowlers who have played at least two games in this World Cup. In this showpiece, the average run-rate in the first powerplay hovers around six, but Bumrah’s economy stands at a thrifty 2.9 during this phase.

He hardly gives breathing space to the batters, just as he had restricted a free-flowing Gill today.

It is not that Bumrah is incapable of moments of magic. He can bring out that dreaded yorker at will, like the one that crashed into Bangladesh batter Mahmudullah’s stumps. Or that slower delivery which deceived Pakistan’s Mohammad Rizwan before nudging the stumps.