Jasprit Bumrah is no ordinary bowler. He never was. From his strange hop-skip run-up to his awkward follow-through, Bumrah looks like a bowler one would encounter in India’s dusty bylanes hosting gully cricket. He is far removed from the great West Indian fast bowlers of yore or the sultans of swing from Pakistan. But underestimate Bumrah at your own peril.
Bumrah today, without a shadow of a doubt, is the best all-format bowler in world cricket. And his literal demolition of the Australian batting line-up in the recent Perth Test had all the signs of a bowler who had reached the peak of his craft. The obvious comparison here, in the Indian context, is with the legendary Kapil Dev. But Kapil’s was a different era. Neither was there so much cricket back then, nor were patently batsmen-friendly formats like T20 cricket conceived of.