From humble beginnings in Ahmedabad, Jasprit Bumrah has become undisputably the best cross-format fast bowler in the world. But what’s it actually like to face him? Ben Gardner finds out. This article was originally published in issue 88 of Wisden Cricket Monthly, available to order here.
It’s an inevitable truth of opening the batting in Test cricket that sometimes a ball just has your name on it. It’s rarer that a bowler simply has a batter’s number, and that the batter makes their peace with it. And yet that’s all Usman Khawaja – who over the first half of the 2020s has nailed Test cricket’s hardest job as successfully as anyone – could do, his technique tested and his stumps disturbed without respite.
Six of his nine dismissals in the 2024/25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy came at Jasprit Bumrah’s hand, Khawaja returning the lowest series average of his late-career renaissance. It’s a snapshot of the levels at which Bumrah is now operating, the India quick pushing into a category all of his own last year as he became the first bowler to reach 200 Test wickets at an average below 20.
In 2024 alone, he claimed 71 wickets at 14.92. There have been 107 instances of a bowler taking 50 or more Test wickets in a calendar year. Of those, just three have averaged less than 15: Sydney Barnes in 1912, Imran Khan in 1982 and Bumrah last year. To describe him as a once-in-a- generation player is, if anything, underselling it. This zenith was all the more special given it came with India in a rare funk, losing a first series at home since 2012 and surrendering the Border-Gavaskar Trophy for the first time in a decade.
Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have since departed the scene, leaving Bumrah as arguably India’s most prominent international cricketer, and undoubtedly their best. Next in his sights: England, where India haven’t won a series in nearly 20 years.
‘He's one of a kind’
“He peppered me. I got hit everywhere on my body.” Though his South Africa Test career came to an end at the start of last year, there are few better qualified than Dean Elgar to talk about what it’s like to face Bumrah, and what it takes to stop him. He faced up to a 24-year-old Bumrah playing his maiden Test series back in 2018, and no one has opened against him in Tests more often. Elgar’s had some success, too – only Joe Root averages more than his 49.46 against India when Bumrah is in the XI.
Even before Bumrah delivers, you can tell that something special is happening. The start to his run-up is all his own, the ball clasped in two hands in front of him, more trotting than running. As he gets to the crease, the arms stiffen and straighten in front of him as if picking out his spot. Then comes the lurch and snap, those limbs finding a rubbery flexibility. The right wrist flicks the ball out before the left arm windmills round, each adding that extra hint of zip. It’s like nothing else in cricket.
Facing him for the first time, there’s no frame of reference. “He’s one of a kind,” Elgar tells Wisden Cricket Monthly. “You don’t pick it up when you face him for the first few occasions. It’s quite difficult to prepare for that, so you almost have to adapt to his style out there in the middle.”
Make no mistake, the unique action is no gimmick. It’s the key factor in what makes Bumrah so good, delivering the ball from way in front of the stumps even as his foot stays behind the crease. “It does make quite a big difference over the length of the pitch,” Elgar says. Bumrah effectively makes cricket a 20-yard game. In a sport where a few miles an hour can be the difference between stardom and obscurity, the reduced reaction time can mean everything.
Then there’s what happens as the ball comes out. “He’s got the hyperextension in his elbow as well, where the extra flexibility creates more whip when he delivers the ball down,” explains Elgar. “It affects the flight of the ball. It creates a different trajectory in the air and as it hits the wicket it’s almost like he’s able to generate a bit of skid. Other bowlers, their fuller ball would have a bit less on it and you’d be able to play through the line a bit easier, whereas his fuller ball would hit the bat a little bit harder.”
Given the mythology around other aspects of Bumrah’s rise – the story of him developing his yorkers, for example, aiming at a skirting board while bowling in his family home so as not to wake his napping mother – it’s remarkable that the origin of his action remains a mystery. “It wasn’t until I joined a national junior camp and saw a video of myself [that he saw his action was different],” Bumrah told The Guardian last year.
“I was just bowling fast and taking wickets, it never occurred to me. Now it’s my strength. It may have gotten jumbled up from watching lots of different bowlers on television but I’ve been fortunate: no coach has ever tried to change me.”
Calm on the outside, and fiery beneath the surface
The other way in which Bumrah stands out from his peers comes after and between deliveries. Fast bowling is an art born of passion, effort,
and pain. The physical exertion required to fling the ball down faster than a speeding car, only to see the ball blocked, left or driven almost every time, only builds the frustration. When the decisive moment comes, the reward is letting it all out. Think Dale Steyn, the vein at his temple in a constant state of near-explosion. Think Brett Lee, revving an invisible chainsaw having just chopped his opponent in half.
Bumrah is different. Wickets are greeted with a smile and a shrug, palms open towards the sky as if to say, ‘Well, what did you think was going to happen?’. But it’s taken a lot of effort to look this casual. Like everything else with Bumrah, it’s an attitude primed towards gaining the upper hand.
“I’m a fast bowler, I don’t enjoy getting hit,” Bumrah told Times of India last year. “When I was a youngster, I would get angry and then try to bowl very fast. That never worked for me as I would lose line and length, and that would not help the team. So I realised that it’s not necessary to be angry or go overboard. How do I use it to my advantage? When my best performance comes, what is my mindset? So I am calm and relaxed.”
Still, don’t mistake that serenity for civility. Bumrah can be riled, and you can be sure you’ll regret it if he is. “It’s his immense competitiveness and his will to beat you,” says Elgar, when asked what sets Bumrah apart. “He’s an extremely feisty character, he maybe doesn’t say a lot on the field, but he comes with a really good presence and aura about him.”
One recent instance stands out. Part way through last winter’s Border-Gavaskar Trophy, Australia drafted in the 19-year-old opener Sam Konstas, basically as a specialist Bumrah needler. He ramped and he sledged, and he told the TV cameras just how much he was loving it. On the first evening of the final Test, with India 2-1 down and having been skittled for 185, a flashpoint arrived. Irked by perceived delaying tactics, Bumrah had words with Konstas, the umpire stepping in before his last ball of the day. Bumrah relaxed himself, nicked off Khawaja, and then turned back towards his newfound nemesis for a silent staredown. “He doesn’t have to say too much,” says Elgar. “I think he just lets his ability take over.”
How do England deal with a problem like Bumrah?
Bumrah’s Test emergence in 2018 felt like a bolt from the unknown, arriving unique and fully formed. And yet his improvement since then
has been marked, the average dropping from 27 in 2019 to 26.5 in 2020 to 20 in 22, before last year’s annus mirabilis that may yet prove to be his new normal. A bowler with his natural skillset could easily coast on their gifts and still be among the elite. Instead, he has strived for every edge he can find.
“A coach’s dream,” is how Mahela Jayawardene at Mumbai Indians describes him. What’s changed isn’t any one thing, it’s everything. Bumrah has remained the same, while improving every aspect of his game, reaching a peak that ranks among the greatest the game has seen.
“His consistency and his accuracy developed a hell of a lot,” adds Elgar. “With his pace and his swing and his action, he’s still very, very accurate, and he always asks the right question.” That combination of suffocation and incision is best illustrated by Test cricket’s secondary bowling metrics: economy and strike-rate.
Among seamers to play five or more Tests last year, only four had a better economy rate – this despite a series spent against England’s Bazballers. And no one took wickets more frequently. “I always feel like no matter how good a bowler is, they’ll always give me something to score off,” said Khawaja. “I just never felt like I could score off him. It just felt so hard. I’ve never found someone so hard to score off and get off strike against as Bumrah, and you always feel like he’s got a wicket ball up his sleeve.”
Given all that, how exactly do England stop him?
For Elgar, the key was sticking to the old-fashioned principles of opening the batting, and remembering that things would, at some point, get easier. “I always felt that if I left him well and defended him well, that was a massive tick for us as a batting group,” he says. “You’re nullifying their best bowler, and if you go unscathed by not losing wickets against him, that works in your favour.”
Based on what we’ve seen over the last three years, that’s unlikely to be England’s approach. The mantra is clear: ‘Go harder, go faster, never take a backward step’. And there is some logic to it. If survival looks impossible, why not make the most of the time you do have?
But given the inexperience elsewhere in India’s attack, with Mohammed Shami left out and Ishant Sharma retiring since their last visit, a targeted approach might be advisable. It may go against the grain, but perhaps Jasprit times call for desperate measures. Australia, in beating India 3-1, tried both methods. Nathan McSweeney and Konstas were both sacrificed on the altar of Bumrah, the former blocking doggedly, striking at 33.96, and the latter attacking from the off. India’s spearhead took 32 wickets at an average of 13.06 and neither has played a Test since.
For England, winning the war might require simply limiting their losses to Bumrah along the way.
This article was originally published in Issue 88 of Wisden Cricket Monthly magazine, available to buy here.
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