Whoever you are as a batter, the Player of the T20 World Cup has a delivery to deal with you
Andrew Fidel Fernando01-Jul-2024An angled-in length ball that zips away to clip the stumps, a series of pinpoint yorkers tailing in, a wicked offcutter, a floater into the toes, a nasty throat-high bouncer, a whole over in the channel – whoever you are, if you have held a bat and you tried to hit a cricket ball with it, our guy has something that will shake you.The ambit of this article is to discuss Player of the Tournament Jasprit Bumrah’s exploits in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024. But how to hem player in to parameters? No bowler can be all things to all humans. Bumrah comes close.The obvious starting points are the aesthetic marvels. In the final, his third ball, angled in to Reeza Hendricks, pitching on a line that suggested it was heading for middle and leg, darted deviously away to catch off stump two thirds up. This is, on first sight, perhaps the ball of the tournament – the Koh-i-Noor that glitters in India’s crown. Hendricks, bless him, had no chance. It is likely no other batter in this tournament would have done either.Related
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You take that delivery, bleach the players’ clothes, put red dye into the ball, take the vast majority of the TV viewership away (sorry Test cricket, we wish you were more loved), and that off bail still does its wild somersaults. The bat still finds itself prodding balefully down the wrong line. The bowler still wheels away beaming.You could cut together a highlights reel for any bowler at this T20 World Cup, and as wonderful as many have been (Rashid Khan, Anrich Nortje, Fazalhaq Farooqi, and Arshdeep Singh all had great tournaments), none have a collection of spectacular deliveries that quite have the dazzle of the Bumrah gems.If one magic ball in a major final is not enough, how’s a reverse-swinging full delivery to slip between bat and pad and graze leg stump in the 18th over (see you later, Marco Jansen)? In the semi-final, how’s a perfectly pitched offcutter to draw Phil Salt into a big shot down the ground, before spitting it past the inside edge and into the stumps? Or ball to Babar Azam on a spicy New York deck, angled in, pitched back of a length, making a mess of the batter’s decision-making, ending with a neat catch to first slip? How to match such a set for variety? For charisma?No matter what your skills are as a batter, Bumrah can find a way past your defences•Pankaj Nangia/ICC/Getty ImagesBut say you’re a sceptic/curmudgeon/pragmatist/bore. Sure, these were great deliveries, but were they not a mere handful of balls over the course of a month-long event?Not to worry. Bumrah’s got you covered.He may make more raids into the realms of the unplayable than most bowlers, but where Bumrah lives, where he has built a body of work, is by being unhittable. In this World Cup, largely played on bowler-friendly tracks, Bumrah took this bowling virtue to an extreme. No other bowler from a side that played in the Super Eight had a better economy rate than his 4.17. Of the 124 runs he conceded off 178 balls bowled, 32 runs were “not in control” by ESPNcricinfo’s measures – 26% of the runs he conceded.Bumrah had 15 wickets of his own in this tournament, but the data suggests that his magnificent control also created wicket opportunities for team-mates. Arshdeep, Bumrah’s most-frequent collaborator at the top and tail of an opposition innings, finished with 17 dismissals, equalling Farooqi’s tournament-high tally.
If you are of the inclination to wade way into nerd territory and look up economy rates by innings phase, you would be no less staggered by his domination. In the three World Cups played this decade (Bumrah missed the 2022 edition, but let’s give other bowlers a chance), Bumrah is the most economical powerplay bowler, the most economical death bowler, and the third-most economical middle-overs bowler.There is no portion of a T20 innings in which Bumrah is not the best option. So it turned out in Saturday’s final, when captain Rohit Sharma went to Bumrah right after Axar Patel was clobbered for 24 runs in the 15th over. Bumrah generally comes on later than the 16th, but with six immaculate balls, he conceded just four against two batters running riot, and hampered the opposition’s stride.We know roughly why Bumrah is so good. There are a variety of physical phenomena at play here: for a bowler who is as sharp as he is (140kph range), his release point is further forward than most, which means batters have a fraction less time to gauge length. He puts so much backspin on his fuller deliveries, they travel further in the air before pitching. Batters frequently play for balls in the slot, when they are getting yorkers or low full tosses instead.And then there is the control and the creativity. If Bumrah can’t beat you with pace or skill, he could still outthink you. At worst, he can dry up your runs.In the three-format age, no bowler has reaped skills from one, and sown their seeds so gloriously into the others. He has top-order Test wickets with slower balls, bowled Test-match lines and lengths to spectacular effect in T20s, and developed a host of transferable bowling skills such as reverse swing, plus the mental agility to know which drawer of delights to open at which time.Whoever you are, Bumrah’s got something that will shake you.
