Jasprit Bumrah: India’s pace wildcard
Traditionally high-quality spin bowling has been the foundation of India’s bowling attack but in the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy it has a battery of seamers to rival any in the competition.
When India won the ICC Champions Trophy in 2013, the finger spinners Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin shared 20 wickets between them – accounting for 50 per cent of the total wickets taken by the team – but a look through India’s squad for this tournament suggests it has a more balanced attack this time out.
Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah, as well as the seam-bowling allrounder Hardik Pandya, will relish the extra pace and bounce generally on offer in English conditions and India faces a selection headache in deciding how many of the quintet to squeeze into the team for Sunday’s Group B match against Pakistan at Edgbaston.
Bumrah is the most recent of the frontline seamers to emerge. With an unorthodox jerky action, toe-crunching yorker and cool head when bowling at the death, the 23-year-old immediately turned heads. He announced himself on the world stage by dismissing Australia captain Steve Smith on his ODI debut in January 2016 and has an impressive haul of 22 wickets from 11 matches. He’s been similarly eye-catching in T20Is, with 33 wickets from 24 matches and a miserly economy-rate of 6.58.
Such is the strength of India’s pace arsenal there is no guarantee Bumrah will play against Pakistan but he has made a strong case for his inclusion so far in his brief career. Having been trusted to bowl the crucial death overs by Virat Kohli, India’s captain knows the youngster has a big-match mentality.
Bumrah says he is learning quickly how to adapt to conditions on his first tour of England. “It’s been a different experience for me because it’s my first visit [to England] so I am still learning and I am still asking the players who have played here before what kind of lengths to bowl and what kind of areas to bowl.
“You don’t have to try too much over here because there is a little bit of help in comparison to India. There is a little bit of bounce and the ball stays relatively new.”
India’s seamers showed their pedigree in the warm-up fixture against Bangladesh at The Oval, where Yadav and Bhuvneshwar took three wickets apiece to skittle the opposition for 84, but Bumrah doesn’t expect such seam-friendly conditions at Edgbaston.
“The wicket was very helpful for bowling at that time and the weather was also convenient for bowling. But I don’t think it will be so convenient for bowling when the main tournament starts for us. We will take confidence from that but I think it will be totally different.”
Bumrah says the match against Pakistan will inevitably carry an extra bit of spice but insists it is important to focus on the task in hand and not get drawn into the emotion of the occasion in front of a sell-out crowd in Birmingham.
“An India-Pakistan match is always special,” he says. “We don’t play often against Pakistan so whenever you play there is a little bit of pressure but you always try to treat it as a normal game; to relax and be calm. You have to go through your normal processes and routines.
“Whenever we play against Pakistan it’s a special occasion for the fans so they always come out in big numbers and cheer for us. It’s always good to have good support whenever you are playing. The Indian team wherever it goes it usually gets a full house so we have gotten used to it a little bit but it’s still always special.”
Asked to identify the biggest threat carried by Pakistan, Bumrah said it would be naïve to pick out specific individuals. “I don’t plan like that, for a specific person,” he says. “I think the whole team is dangerous. Nowadays in cricket a number 10 batsman can hurt you as well so we have respect for each and every one and plan according to that.”
Whether Bumrah gets his chance against Pakistan or later in the tournament, he has rapidly developed a reputation as one of the brightest starlets on the international circuit. As the youngest member of a group of seamers all aged 29 or under, the future looks very bright for India indeed.