Bumrah chooses to stay “stable,” and when he doesn’t have the results to show for his work, he doesn’t get too down on himself

Sidharth Monga12-Jul-20224:32

Is Jasprit Bumrah the best all-format bowler in the world?

A lot of fast bowlers build themselves a character. Curtly Ambrose never did interviews while he played, almost becoming this mythical, impenetrable figure immune to human failings. Mohammad Asif almost always sounded contemptuous of batters in his interviews, once famously ruing that AB de Villiers got out too early, thus denying him the joy of a full set up and the payoff. Most often, they are the rockstars of cricket: eccentric, individualistic and definitely not pop. They make you believe nothing is beyond them.After a point, fast bowling becomes a way of living. They don’t stop being a fast bowler after six hours of play. Like the old-time professional wrestlers who never broke kayfabe. No wonder a lot of fast bowlers like pro wrestling. Big Boss Man, this big monster heel in kayfabe, once smashed the door of his car’s boot on his hand in the presence of fans. He showed no pain. When Jake “The Snake” Roberts was a kid, his father Grizzly Smith used to tell him how he was planning to take the family out of town because his wrestling adversaries were coming after him. Then of course the Internet broke down the fourth wall to usher in the Reality Era where wrestlers hardly stay in character outside the shows.Related

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If he ever were to be a pro wrestler, Jasprit Bumrah would belong to the Reality Era. When he does well – sorry, when the result on the day is good, as Bumrah would, and others should, describe it – and when the accolades are flowing, Bumrah doesn’t add to any myth-building. Instead, he chooses to stay real – stable, in his words. When Bumrah doesn’t have the results to show for his work, he doesn’t get too down on himself.Only last Monday and Tuesday, Bumrah was part of an attack that failed to defend 377 in the fourth innings of a Test. They didn’t even come close to threatening England. He himself went at 4.35 runs an over. A week later, against the same batters, Bumrah has six wickets in a little over seven overs in an ODI. Of course, Bumrah bowled beautifully at The Oval, swinging the ball mesmerizingly and also getting seam movement from the pitch, but what he tried wasn’t much different to what he does on his worst days.”This is the beauty of cricket, isn’t it?” Bumrah said when asked how he reconciles with such wildly swinging fortunes when it comes to the results. “One day you will see everything is going in your favour. Another day you can try whatever you want, but it doesn’t work for you. That is exactly why you need to keep a stable head.”Every day is a new day. There will be days when you will get the edge first ball, there will be days you will bowl similarly all day but not get a single edge. You don’t want to get desperate in these scenarios. That is why I rate stability a lot. Because at the end of the day there is very little in your hand. Once a bowler has let the ball go, there is nothing in his control.”Sometimes you will bowl well, get the edge, but the catch will be dropped. Sometimes the ball will pass over the stumps. Sometimes a full toss will get you a wicket. That doesn’t mean you bowl more full tosses. So I only try to prepare what I can. And not think of what is not in my hand. After that whatever is the result, I accept and move on.”Jasprit Bumrah picked up career-best figures of 6 for 19•Associated PressThen it is probably not a good idea to ask Bumrah if this was as well as he has bowled. “I don’t look at end results and judge my bowling,” Bumrah said. “There have been instances when I have bowled so much better than this and not gotten wickets. But I always looked at following the same routine. Yes, today was a day where the white ball swung and there was some seam movement. So yeah, I wanted to exploit that.”When we started the innings, we saw there was some seam and swing. So [Mohammed] Shami and I had a conversation and decided we should bowl a little fuller and try and bowl the Test-match length. It was a good day that we got the wickets. And there was some help in the beginning, and the wicket was also on the softer side.”

“Today was a good day. It will bring a lot of praise. But neither do I get too happy with praise nor do I get too down with criticism.”Jasprit Bumrah

Fast bowling is a tough job but it is also an optimist’s job. You are, after all, cheating your body into performing acts it was not built to do. Accordingly, many fast bowlers internalise that they are the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be. Bumrah? He doesn’t even take it seriously when a respected pundit such as Nasser Hussain calls him the best bowler across formats today.”I don’t focus on these things,” Bumrah said. “Today was a good day. It will bring a lot of praise. But neither do I get too happy with praise nor do I get too down with criticism. I don’t look at it this way: I am here, I am very good in all formats. I enjoy every format. I try to do what I can. I respect what people say but I don’t take it seriously. Very grateful for the applause you get but I always try to keep a stable head. That’s how I will always be.”This is how cricket is, and will be. Most cricketers and fans don’t like talking about luck and conditions because of the popular perception that luck or reliance on conditions is the opposite of skill. It couldn’t be farther from the truth.This has been a weird year in England in which the Dukes Test balls have moved less and gone soft sooner than usual, but the white Kookaburra has been swinging more than it does and for longer. On top of that Bumrah got a green pitch on a muggy afternoon. That he said made his job easier: he just had to bowl line and length and let the ball do the rest as opposed to making things happen on flat ODI decks. The edges came readily, none fell short, and half chances stuck.This is a real description of the events at The Oval. And also, by extension, at Edgbaston. This is Bumrah’s description. A Reality Era description.

After a turbulent 12 months, can he produce the magic that once made him so instrumental in Pakistan’s Test domination?

Danyal Rasool15-Jul-2022There was a time when it felt like Pakistan Test cricket subsisted largely on series against Sri Lanka.Between 2009 and 2015, there were no fewer than seven Test series between the two sides, with Pakistan visiting Sri Lanka four times in six years to play 11 Tests. Only one player from each side is still part of the squad that began that cycle in 2009. For Sri Lanka, it’s the relatively ever-present Angelo Mathews, and for Pakistan, whatever the opposite of that is in Fawad Alam. While Fawad’s redemptive narrative arc has already been exhausted, it is another Pakistan player who might be looking to script his own over the next fortnight. He played just the final of those quickfire series in Sri Lanka, but the impact he would make provided Pakistan with a template for short-term Test domination.Yasir Shah had only made his Test debut following Saeed Ajmal’s bowling-action issues, and this excitable, gregarious legspinner was only seven months into his international career. Sure, the run-up needed sorting, an aspect none other than Shane Warne helped him fine-tune, and he needed to bowl slower to allow natural drift and spin to have its maximum impact, but there was something here to work with. Even so, having him shoulder the responsibility of matching Sri Lanka on their own turf in a spin-bowling shoot-out seemed excessive. For all of Ajmal’s brilliance, there was a reason Pakistan had ended up on the wrong side of the previous three Test series results in the island nation.Related

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What Yasir achieved was nothing short of historic. With seven, six and five-wicket innings hauls in each Test respectively, he would top the wickets charts with 24. Dhammika Prasad was a distant second with 14, and no other spinner managed double digits. Of the 52 Sri Lankan wickets to fall, nearly half came off Yasir’s bowling. Pakistan would go on to seal a first series win in Sri Lanka since 2006, and in the sub-continent at least, Misbah-ul-Haq’s Pakistan had the player to build the Test side around.It wasn’t just Asia either. In London the following year, Yasir would take apart England with impressive hauls at Lord’s and The Oval, deploying the one that went straight on with just as much venom as the one that spun prodigiously. Pakistan rose to the top of the Test rankings off the back of that; a year later it would be West Indies in their own backyard who bore the brunt of this cricketer at the top of his game, cleaning up Shannon Gabriel with his last ball of the series to give Pakistan their only Test series win in the Caribbean. How indeed did he do that?Part of the answer lies in faith and timing. Yasir was at his best when Pakistan had worked out how to go about making the UAE, their adopted home, a fortress, and his game style was perfect for it. In Misbah as captain, he was blessed with a leader who could perhaps watch his beard grow in real-time without losing patience. As a man who only became captain when he was on the verge of quitting the game at 36, he was an ardent believer in good things coming to those who waited. And so Yasir, a rhythm bowler par excellence, operated from one end to devastating effect, handing out the UAE drubbings like they were going out of style. He became the quickest man to 200 Test wickets in another epic series against New Zealand, when, for a surreal week or so, a Dunedin-born Australian legspinner who played in the years between the two World Wars called Clarrie Grimmett became something of a household name in Pakistan.All this, remember, had happened over the span of barely four years, and just as quickly as it occurred, the unravelling began. Misbah, Yasir’s strongest backer, had stepped away from the game, and Pakistan now had a no-nonsense fitness enthusiast in Mickey Arthur as coach. Yasir was the first man he cited as an example of laxity in this department in the Pakistan side. Besides, consecutive series in South Africa and Australia followed. He was especially ordinary, and missed games in both series. In fact, in the Southern Hemisphere, Yasir’s 20 wickets have come at 87 apiece at an economy rate of 4.37.Yasir Shah’s numbers haven’t been particularly impressive since Pakistan moved back home from the UAE•Associated PressMost of all, however – and this must be a particularly bittersweet one to acknowledge – Pakistan finally moved back home from the UAE, both his kingdom and his comfort blanket. In Pakistan, pace bowlers are at the top of the food chain, with wickets tailored to their desires. Azhar Ali, then Pakistan’s captain, euphemistically referred to his “changing role” in the side, but few were in any doubt as to what that meant.The fast bowlers did indeed take over, and Yasir dropped off. His average in Pakistan was 36.50; in the UAE, he had taken wickets at 24.56 apiece. The fitness issues began to pile up, as well as a criminal probe in Pakistan that at the time saw him become a person of interest for the police. The charges against Yasir were later dropped, though.Pakistan thought they had spin talent coming through the Quaid-e-Azam trophy, with Sajid Khan and Nauman Ali topping the domestic bowling charts last year, and gently, Yasir was phased out. But despite an encouraging spin-dominated series win in Bangladesh, Pakistan were reminded of what they missed in an insipid, uninspiring series for its spinners against Australia. Seven years after that Sri Lanka series, the challenge ahead of Pakistan loomed large, and in punting for Yasir, the visitors have gone to the well once more, praying it hasn’t completely run dry.Seven years on, age isn’t on his side, and neither, tragically, is Warne, one of Yasir’s most generous supporters. Sri Lanka have younger, hungrier spinners, who are also in better form, having cleaned up Australia last week. But this is, therapeutically, what Yasir perhaps needs most. It was the place where he proved his doubters wrong, his answer so resoundingly emphatic they wouldn’t utter a peep for years to come. Now, they swarm once more in Sri Lanka, a country that has, over the past few weeks, shown limitless generosity in their love of this game. It might have one last gift for Yasir in store.

The relentless calendar has taken away the teams’ opportunities to see another side of a country and engage with its cricketing heritage

Matt Roller01-Oct-2022Two nights before England’s T20I squad flew to Pakistan, some of the touring party were in London for Eoin Morgan’s testimonial dinner. Conversation naturally turned to the trip and what to expect in a country where nobody present had played international cricket before.Or, at least, almost nobody. Among the dinner’s attendees was England’s Player of the Match from their previous international game in Pakistan, who is due to return in December with the Test squad. As Jos Buttler recalled, “Morgs said to Jimmy, ‘you’re the only bloke who’s been to Pakistan and you still remain, you old b*****d!'”Related

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James Anderson was an unused member of the Test squad on that last tour back in 2005, but was a promising one-day bowler at the time. During the five-match ODI series that wrapped the trip up after three Tests, he ran in with a hint of blond highlighting his hair and was England’s leading wicket-taker alongside Liam Plunkett and Andrew Flintoff.In the fifth ODI, a dead rubber which England won by six runs in Rawalpindi, Anderson won the match award – no mean feat, given he had not been picked in their starting XI. With Flintoff playing as a batter because of an injury, Anderson came in via the short-lived Supersub rule, and took 4 for 48, three of them at the death.Two weeks previously, Anderson and England had played their only warm-up match ahead of that one-day series, against Pakistan A at Lahore’s Gymkhana ground. It is a small, quaint venue, tucked away in the old Lawrence Gardens – now known as Bagh-e-Jinnah – but one teeming with history.Seventeen years ago, Anderson was the last England player to bowl a ball there when Bazid Khan – who has since established himself as a respected pundit and broadcaster – lap-swept him for four then crunched him through cover to seal a one-wicket victory. His partner, who did not face a ball, was Imran Tahir, playing in his hometown five-and-a-half years before making his South Africa debut.

Tour games, particularly at boutique venues, are not commercially viable. In a sport where the bottom line has become increasingly important, that will continue to outweigh the opportunity they provide to see another side of a country and engage with its cricketing heritage.

The Gymkhana ground had hosted three men’s internationals when Pakistan was a young Test-playing nation – and country – between 1955 and 1959, but the Gaddafi Stadium and its adjoining national high-performance centre have dominated the Lahore cricketing scene ever since.England teams have often played at the Gymkhana ground down the years, as have a number of other touring sides. As recently as 2007, South Africa warmed up for an ODI series against a local XI there, Mark Boucher and AB de Villiers both hitting hundreds.With every step around the boundary’s edge, it feels increasingly unlikely that an international team would ever play there again. As more and more fixtures are squeezed into a calendar which is already close to breaking point, few tours leave enough time for warm-up games; when they do, teams often prefer to play intra-squad matches to ensure a higher quality of opposition.England did not play a single warm-up game before this T20I series and when they return for the Test tour, most of their preparation will take place in Abu Dhabi. Presidential-style security has confined the touring party to their hotels, aside from a couple of rounds of golf, but players have become grudgingly accepting of the restrictions.The idea of the world’s best traipsing down to grounds like Lahore’s Bagh-e-Jinnah feels like an anachronism today•Ross Kinnaird/ALLSPORTThe Wisden Almanack review of the 2005 tour detailed “all-embracing protection from which the players could not escape” and noted that only five squad members made the trip to Wagah Gate on Pakistan’s border with India, “just 30 minutes’ drive from their hotel in Lahore”. Security has ramped up a notch in the years since, with no expense spared.On this tour, the schedule has been relentless. England have not trained at all since the start of the series, with seven games crammed into 13 days. “It makes it tough because we can’t practise consistently on the wickets we’re playing on,” Dawid Malan said. “I wouldn’t say that’s an excuse but that’s ultimately the nature of international cricket.”Tour games, particularly at boutique venues, are not commercially viable. In a sport where the bottom line has become increasingly important, that will continue to outweigh the opportunity they provide to see another side of a country and engage with its cricketing heritage.It may be too soon to lament the death of the tour game. England played them in Barbados and Antigua earlier this year and are due to play one in New Zealand early next year and two in Bangladesh in late February. As the world emerges from the Covid era, they may yet feature more prominently in teams’ schedules.But, increasingly, the idea of the world’s best traipsing down to grounds like Lahore’s Bagh-e-Jinnah feels like an anachronism. Somewhere along the journey towards a more corporate, more professional sport, some of cricket’s romance has been lost.

From the time the team were in it only for the love of the game, to now, when they are a respected, formidable outfit, she has been an inspiring, enduring presence

Shashank Kishore23-Sep-2022Retiring on the field is a privilege accorded to few in Indian cricket. So it is heartwarming that Jhulan Goswami will bid adieu to what will no doubt be rousing applause from fans and colleagues at Lord’s tomorrow, bringing to a close a career that began all those years ago in nondescript Chakdaha in Bengal.A farewell game of this magnitude is unlike any other in recent memory in Indian cricket. Several stars faded away quietly in recent years – Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, even Goswami’s good friend Mithali Raj. And when an injured Goswami sat motionless as India were knocked out of the 2022 World Cup in the last over of their group-stage game against South Africa in Christchurch, you wondered if another legendary career would meet a similar end. Thankfully, Goswami will get an exit of the kind she deserves, even if it may not be as celebrated as Sachin Tendulkar’s was.On Saturday, when she takes the field for one final time in India colours, she will complete a circle of sorts. Five years ago it was at Lord’s that she came within touching distance of cricket’s ultimate glory, against England in the 2017 World Cup final. While that dream was not realised, she can now proudly leave with a series win in England, India’s first in the country in 23 years.Related

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To the current generation, Goswami is the last link between two eras of Indian women’s cricket. For long she has been synonymous with the game in India, alongside the likes of Raj, Diana Edulji and Shantha Rangaswamy, among others. Until her farewell series, Goswami hadn’t played a single ODI for which Raj wasn’t in the XI.Goswami and Shikha Pandey were the flag bearers of India’s bowling for over half a decade, but apart from them, the fast-bowling cupboard was thinly stocked until recently, when new talent began to come through. While it may yet take a while before India can find someone to fly the flag for the next two decades, the signs are promising.Watching the dream crumble: at the 2017 World Cup final•Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty ImagesLong before she became Jhulu to her younger team-mates, Goswami was a kid with stars in her eyes, mesmerised at the sight of Cathryn Fitzpatrick in the 1997 World Cup final at Eden Gardens, where Goswami was a ball girl. On Saturday, when she bowls alongside Renuka Thakur and Meghna Singh at Lord’s, it will be a symbolic passing of the baton: Thakur was once a starstruck academy kid and ball girl in Dharamsala when Goswami played for India at the 2016 T20 World Cup, and Meghna once waited in the lobby of a Kanpur hotel all day so she could make a beeline for Goswami when she arrived, just to be able to get a ball autographed.Goswami’s retirement, coming on the heels of Raj’s will truly mark the end of an era in Indian women’s cricket. A period of two decades or so in which they went from being a middling team that played for the love of cricket to one that commands respect and a standing, one that is followed with nearly as much passion as their men’s counterparts, and one that stands poised for a revolution next year, with the possibilities the women’s IPL will bring.Goswami’s career was marked by deep commitment, an abiding quest for perfection, and a willingness to fight the odds – she prevailed over injuries to back, heel, shoulder, ankle and knees. Her rise and the way she made a place for herself at the very top of the women’s game is also a celebration of the potential that lies in India’s small towns and villages.A common refrain when you talk about Goswami the cricketer is about how simple she is in life and in cricket. She has been old-school but modern. Old-school because she believed bowling fitness was greater than gym fitness, and modern because as she aged, she embraced the need to keep up with the demands of cross-format cricket, even if it meant stepping into the unknown.As a bowler, in how she was seemingly programmed to bowl to hit the top of off, she embodied the virtues of a clutter-free mind. She had a potent weapon in a devious inswinger early in her career, and to that she added one that hits the seam and holds its line. This latter talent was best showcased in the delivery that bowled Meg Lanning at the 2017 World Cup semi-final.Documented evidence of it is rare in domestic cricket, but several players will tell you how Goswami also had one of the meanest bouncers. And if they misfielded off her bowling, players would fear to look her in the eye for hours. But once off the field, she’d dance and sing with the same players, and if India won, she would treat them to ice cream and dessert.Goswami’s genial ways were as much a hallmark of her career as her bowling. She would not shy away from mingling with the youngest members of the group, making them feel warm and welcome. In defeat, she would play agony aunt, providing comfort. “Chin up, girls, we haven’t lost a war” was her famous quip, brought out at times when the dressing room was low after a loss. She believed that if you make sacrifices to make it to the highest level, you need to celebrate everything the game, and life, throws at you.At other times, like in that 2017 semi-final, she would be the immovable force, willing and able to look batters in the eye, to command her fielders to raise the volume and display on-field brilliance to show them “we are no less”. Symbolic, then, that she led by example in knocking Lanning over the way she did.On Saturday when the final run is hit or the last wicket taken, it’s likely there will be a few tears in the Indian dressing room and outside it. After all, Goswami has been a towering presence for over two decades, playing several roles: captain, older sibling, friend, mentor, philosopher, and more.As Rohit Sharma said recently, players like Goswami come along once in a generation. Those tasked with carrying forward her legacy couldn’t have asked for a better role model. India will miss a workhorse, but may yet benefit in gaining a mentor and teacher who could inspire in others the very virtues that made her a world beater.

All the key numbers from the T20 World Cup in Australia, where ball trumped bat, and the Associate nations had a say

Sampath Bandarupalli14-Nov-2022Ball trumps bat
Favourable conditions for the pace bowlers, bouncy surfaces and massive boundaries contributed to the 2022 T20 World Cup being the second-slowest scoring edition. The tournament’s average run rate was 7.49, only behind the 2021 edition’s 7.43 hosted by the UAE and Oman. The bowlers took a wicket every 18.4 balls, the best among the eight editions of the T20 World Cup.

NZ captain says domestic standards aren’t high enough after back-to-back drubbings

Valkerie Baynes13-Feb-20232:25

Devine: ‘It’s really hard to lose games like that’

A tearful Sophie Devine has admitted she’s at a loss to explain New Zealand’s double capitulation, which has left their T20 World Cup hopes in shreds after two games.Bowled out by South Africa for 67, their second-lowest T20I total just two days after slumping to 76 all out against Australia, Devine described both performances in Paarl as “embarrassing”.”I’m not sure too many words can describe the disappointment and… the embarrassment,” Devine said after losing to the hosts by 65 runs, scarcely better than their 97-run defeat to the Australians on Saturday. “That’s not good enough for an international cricket side and I take a lot of that as captain and how I lead this team, and it’s not good enough.”You’ve got to be brave in positions like that. We spoke about it after the Australia game, that we’d rather go down swinging and then go back into our shells and we probably did that again tonight, which is disappointing. And we’ve got to find out why that’s happening because you can’t do that, particularly at World Cups. So they’re some of the discussions that we’re going to have to have because I know we’ve got the skill. We’ve worked very hard as a team. It’s not the effort. It’s how we’re putting it out here on the park. It’s tough.”With a run-rate “absolutely out the window” at -4.050, Devine acknowledged that reaching the knockout stages was unrealistic but she said New Zealand’s remaining games against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka remained valuable as her side tries to unearth why things are going so wrong and how they can improve after their batting order failed for a second straight match. And she called for an examination of her country’s domestic structure to find a solution longer-term”I’m sure we’re going to absolutely dissect every part of this tournament and this campaign when we get back to New Zealand and I think a big part of that’s going to be our domestic game,” she said. “If I’m being brutally honest, I’m not sure if it’s preparing us for international cricket and you’re seeing now, obviously, the WBBL, the Hundred and now the WPL, they’re highly competitive tournaments and they’re preparing players.”We’ve seen Australia, we’re seeing England and I’m scared to think what India’s going to be like with the opportunities that they give themselves. I think we’ve done great things in New Zealand with our domestic cricket but I’m not sure it’s at the same standard as those other competitions so, look, I think everything’s going to be picked apart and rightly so when we get back to New Zealand.”Devine was also critical of the timing of the WPL auction, which began three hours before England faced Ireland and continued throughout that match, ending shortly before the South Africa and New Zealand players took the field.Devine and Amelia Kerr were the only two New Zealand players picked up at the auction, going to Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians respectively. Five other players in their team, including opener Suzie Bates, were called but failed to secure deals.Related

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“I think you’re living under a rock if you think it wasn’t a distraction,” Devine said. “It was bizarre to be honest. I think the timing of it, obviously not ideal but it is what it is. And it was. There was lots of discussions amongst our players about it. But again, we were really open with it, how we felt. I don’t know what the right or the wrong way was to handle it, but I certainly thought that as a group, we spoke about it openly and how it affected us and it’s tough.”It really put you in the spotlight a little bit so it’s not ideal timing but, bigger-picture stuff, it’s pretty incredible for women’s sport and women’s cricket to see some of the money that was thrown around in the tournament that’s going to be kicking off shortly.”Devine was also keen to protect the youngsters in her team, like Eden Carson, who took the early wicket of Tazmin Brits among her 2 for 23, and teenager Fran Jonas. And, while visibly angry at the nature of New Zealand’s latest defeat, she said there would be no shouting as she and team management dissect the performance.”It’s probably going to come out in tears if I’m honest,” she said. “It’s really hard to lose games of cricket like that. I’d much rather we went down swinging and got bowled out for 12 than not show our true ability and be pumped like that. Full credit to South Africa, they were the much better team. Me getting angry is not going to solve anything. I don’t know the answer. I honestly don’t and that’s what’s really hard. That’s what we’re going to have to figure out as a team.”It’s been upsetting and it’s been embarrassing and disappointing, but I’d give anything to play for this group and for the girls that are in that shed upstairs right now. Me getting angry isn’t going to do anything about it. If anything, I need to get around them, wrap my arm around them, particularly those youngsters… we spoke about it after the Australia game, we never want to put them two in that position, and we did it again today. So we’ve got to find the positives amongst it, but it’s going to be a pretty messy 24 hours.”