He had words of praise for the younger members and reverence for captain Rohit Sharma and batting talisman Virat Kohli. The smile on Jasprit Bumrah’s face as he addressed the media in Perth was almost as big, if not bigger, than India’s victory margin of 295 runs.
Fittingly named Player of the Match, Bumrah had said on match-eve that even as a child he enjoyed doing difficult things and loved being a problem-solver.
Border-Gavaskar Trophy
In Perth, India had many problems. They were fielding two debutants, allrounder Nitish Reddy and pacer Harshit Rana, a seemingly out of-form batting legend in Kohli, a struggling opener in KL Rahul, a first timer in Australia in Yashasvi Jaiswal. They were also battling the wounds of a 3-0 humbling to the Kiwis at home.
But Bumrah rose to the challenge. “We’re a new side so I wanted to put myself in tough scenarios when we needed to do something, to make the job a bit easier for the new guys,” he said. And do something he did.
His opening evening spell of 6-3-9-3 broke open the game after India were bowled out for 150 and also showed the younger bowlers the way to bowl on bouncy wickets. An impressive 93 of Bumrah’s 181 Test wickets are either bowled or leg-before.
In Australia, he has 40 wickets at an obscene average of 18.80 and 22 of his 40 sticks are bowled or leg-before. At the Optus he got three leg-befores. Contrast it to the Aussie bowlers. Their pitch map suggested that only 6.4% of the deliveries in the 134.3 overs they bowled were hitting the stumps. His message to the inexperienced attack was, “target the stumps”.
“In Perth there could be a scenario when you come from India where the bounce is not as prominent, and you bowl short because you get excited by the bounce and don’t find the length. It looks good when you bowl a back-of-length delivery and the batter is beaten, but he is still there. We knew that if we make them play more there’s enough in the wicket to give us assistance,” Bumrah said.
One of Bumrah’s great skills is the ability to read conditions and situations and that is something he tried to convey to the bowlers on the first evening. “Sometimes when you’re bowled out for a lower score you can be too desperate and go pole-hunting. When you try too much over here it doesn’t help and run-scoring goes high.”
Hailing debutants Reddy and Rana, Bumrah said, “The biggest positive was that they were not nervous. It didn’t feel like they were playing for the first time in Australia.”
Bumrah also praised opener Jaiswal. “If I had to choose a man of the match, it would be Jaiswal. This was his best Test knock. He has an attacking nature but in that second innings, he left certain balls, he took his time and batted deep. He showed that he has patience and that he’s ready to adapt and change,” said Bumrah.
