Jasprit Bumrah - fire, fury and evolution

What connects Virat Kohli, Steve Smith, David Warner and AB de Villiers? Bumrah's debuts.

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Jasprit Bumrah is 32 today.

He has taken 234 wickets in 52 Tests, and remains the only bowler with 200 or more wickets at an average below 20. It’s 19.79 if you’re keeping track. (And what are you doing, following cricket, if you aren’t?) He can get the ball to zip off a length on any pitch, to any batter. It’s something that should evoke awe because pitches and batters change what a good length is. And getting the ball to spit venomously from wherever that spot may be, is a gift that’s rarer than a Gautam Gambhir XI without allrounders.

The Bumrah of today is not the bowler who first grabbed international attention as a 19-year-old in IPL 2013. He’s different from the 22-year-old who made an unexpected ODI debut and an expected T20I debut in Australia. He’s a more complete version of the 24-year-old who donned the Test whites in South Africa.

There are some twists of fate that can almost make believers out of atheists. One such, is that I was at each of those games.

April 4, 2013: RCB v MI in Bangalore

Uncapped Indian players were still a year away from being part of IPL auctions. John Wright, newly recruited by Mumbai Indians, was doing what he had always done as India coach: watching domestic cricket. The Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy was played till March 31, and the IPL started on April 3. MI’s first game was on April 4. At some point before the SMAT ended, Wright had seen a Gujarat bowler, “running in with an unusual action and trying to bowl 12 consecutive yorkers… And he was quick.” Almost immediately, Bumrah was signed. When he would then be Player of the Match in the final that year, he was already a Mumbai Indians player, although the wider world didn’t know it then.

They got to know it later that week.

In his first over in the big leagues, Bumrah was bowling to Virat Kohli, already acknowledged as India’s next batting superstar. In his first four balls, three were carted to the boundary. Bumrah’s big, booming inswingers were met by Kohli’s bigger booming bat.

The fifth ball was again delivered from wide of the crease, came in more sharply than Kohli accounted for, and rapped him on the pads in front of the stumps. The primeval roar that the teenaged Bumrah let out echoed around a silent Chinnaswamy Stadium. Kohli was so upset at getting out, he hadn’t taken off his pads even at the end of Bumrah’s next over.