Time to stop obsessing about Jasprit Bumrah’s unusual action and focus on his brain

Bumrah’s brain took centerstage at Perth, as it has done all around the world. Cuing up two mistakes of Australian bowlers would show the contrast. At the start of the second innings, admitted by their head coach Andrew McDonald as well, the Australians were a touch short with the new ball. The variable bounce hadn’t kicked in yet on the pitch and the shortness of the length allowed Yashasvi Jaiswal and KL Rahul to settle in. Later on in the day, even when the pitch had begun to wear and tear, the Aussies had devoted themselves to a fuller length, and allowing the Indian batsmen to take a stride forward to negate it.

India’s captain Jasprit Bumrah collects the ball as he prepares to bowl on the second day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth. (AP)

“I see the trend of what is working on that particular day if I am bowling second, I am looking at the opposition team: okay this is what they did right and this is what they did not do right. So I try to learn from that,” Bumrah had said in the past.

He certainly had watched the Australians and went the other way on Sunday evening. He assessed that the danger ball on this pitch was the one that skids in from the back of length. The balls haven’t yet started to kick up alarmingly as sometimes it can go when the cracks open up awry. Here the misbehaving ball was the one that was keeping a touch lower than expected.

And to make that delivery effective, using the new ball, with its accompanying pace, and directing it at the stumps was the way to go. Wasting that first spell is criminal as once the ball goes soft, the slowness of pace can allow the batsmen to tackle it far easier.

And he honed in right away as he usually does: back of length, targeting the stumps, with the occasional straightener to test the outside edge. The iffiness of the Australian top-order of course helped.

The debutant Nathan Sweeney, a middle-order batsman promoted ahead of domestic openers, unsurprisingly struggled and made the wrong decisions. Once he went back, he was done. The pacy skidder kept low and kept sneaking in to move past his prod to trap him lbw.

Australia’s Marnus Labuschagne, right, leaves the field after losing his wicket as India’s captain Jasprit Bumrah celebrates with teammates on the third day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth, Australia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Trevor Collens)

That there was an inevitability about Marnus Labuschagne should alarm the Australians. He has almost stopped moving towards the ball; just shuffles this way and that, intent almost solely on survival. In his good days, the hands might get him out of trouble, with the bat coming in time ahead of the pad. But without the intent to meet the ball with any conviction, his defensive game doesn’t stand much chance.

Bumrah didn’t take long to suss that out and had the ball cutting in sharply from outside off stump. Someone like Marnus should have known what was in store. Bumrah rarely if ever starts the ball from that line and takes it away or lets it go straight from then on.

Certainly not on this pitch. It might not dart in as much as it always did, but still the bat has to be somewhere in line in case it comes in. Startlingly, Labuschagne shouldered arms. And he was done as the ball rammed into his pad.

Turning magic into science

When Bumrah hurls it short of length, his nipbackers move in that much more. And it did to shove out Marnus and drag him right into a hot Australian media pickle, who are now sweating over his place in the team.

Not that what the television obsesses about doesn’t matter. Of course it does. But more than how forward his arm is at release, the way his wrists are angled is perhaps a way for them to go.

India’s captain Jasprit Bumrah collects the ball as he prepares to bowl on the second day of the first cricket test between Australia and India in Perth. (AP)

The arm can be all tilted inwards, but the wrist can be cocked outward – almost as if they are two disjoint parts in that limb. The ball then can come in, forcing the batsman to play before he finds out that it’s a straightener.

By then it becomes too late and it takes a piece of edge along with it, or misses the bat and rams into the pad. In a lesser degree, and in a different way, Andrew Flintoff of England, at his pomp as a bowler for two years, had that wrist-sorcery. He would almost swivel his wrist at the last instant and get the ball to dart in sharply or straighten.

Because of Bumrah’s wrist angle and his finger-work, not many batsmen are thus able to read how much the inward movement will be. That’s why batsmen warily peering through the helmet grill, getting the bat in line, delay the final confident hands-push to meet the ball.

With most pacers’s nipbackers, we see batsmen stride forward, say, to defend compactly, assuredly, and with no doubts about whether they are going to miss the ball. Not with Bumrah, unless you are Steve Smith with his own special technique and Smith in full form that is. Mostly, the batsmen tend to be wary against Bumrah, ready to move the bat right or left to ensure contact.

And his assessment of what to bowl can be devastatingly accurate for the batsmen. He can make the seemingly strange choices like a slower ball at the start of a spell, or show admirable patience in slipping a yorker to ensure its surprise is intact.

Those are essentially magic balls when most bowlers use them but the real magic of Bumrah is that he doesn’t conjure them for their magic-ness. But he turns them into functional tools. To know what to bowl and when to bowl is perhaps the greatest trait a bowler can have. Add to that the ability to bowl that particular delivery.

Bumrah has all the three traits, brain and body has rarely worked synced so effectively. It’s not just the twisted arm or the extension, Bumrah’s real magic is his scientific brain.