Jasprit Bumrah: Fast, furious, fantastic

Leeds: Jasprit Bumrah is one of those rare breeds of Indian fast bowlers who have an aura around them wherever they go, a status that is generally reserved for the more celebrated batters. With Virat Kohli having called it quits from Test cricket, Bumrah is now undoubtedly the biggest superstar in the Indian team. In fact, even when the batting great was active in Tests, the pacer commanded a lot of admiration from the opposition players and the media.

Take the tour of Australia at the turn of the year for example. At the build-up itself, the buzz was about how to play the most lethal fast bowler in the world as much as how to bowl to Kohli. And when Bumrah ran roughshod over the Aussies in the first Test at Perth, bagging a fifer in the first innings and then three in the second, to lead the team to a thumping 295-run victory, his awe factor just grew manifold. 

The same has been happening in England too, where he’s possibly the most spoken-about player. Opener Ben Duckett openly called him the ‘best bowler in the world’ on Saturday, and Bumrah showed why batters dread facing him with another masterful display of fast bowling, bagging 5/83 — his 14th five-wicket haul and  fourth in his last six Tests — in the first innings of the opening game at Headingley.

Every time the 31-year-old held the ball in his hand, it felt like he was going to pick a wicket. His relentless accuracy with barely any bad balls suffocated the English batters, who struggled to enforce their high-octane ‘Bazball’ on him. Yes, Harry Brook did step out and take the attack to him, but Bumrah was equal to the task, altering his lengths suitably to contain them.

On a batting-friendly surface where pacers from both camps struggled against free-hitting batters, Bumrah was in a league of his own. Only the wily Ben Stokes came close to the potency of the Indian. In fact, Bumrah could have had a lot more scalps if not for three dropped catches and a wicket of a no-ball. 

When asked how he deals with this reverence, Bumrah said the best way is to not pay too much attention to all the outside praise. “I can't control all of that, I don't think about that, this is my aura or people are thinking about this or that, it doesn't really concern me,” he said on Sunday.

“What I look at is myself, I look at my own experience, I look at my own preparation and I give it my best shot. What others are saying, what people will write, what people have expectations from me, that is something that I don't try and give it a lot of importance because that is something that is beyond my control, I don't want to use it as baggage even before the game starts. So I look at myself, I try to tick all boxes and if everything goes well, that is how it is supposed to go.

“I am a human being, I will make mistakes and everybody will make mistakes. But I look at myself, if I have ticked all boxes, I have given it my absolute best. I ask myself this question at night, did I give it my absolute best? And if the answer is yes, I quietly go back to sleep.”

More often than not, Bumrah has been ticking all the boxes. He doesn’t have trouble taking a nap. It’s the batters who are having sleepless nights!