India vs England: Bumrah does a Bumrah once again to hide India's batting frailties

Jasprit Bumrah is a phenomenon in world cricket. So much so that, it’s almost difficult to predict where Bumrah is going to bowl each ball. You would know how lethal and effective Bumrah could be with his yorkers. Ask the England batters. The English batting lineup, during Day 2 of the second Test in Visakhapatnam, were ripped apart on Saturday, almost single-handedly by one man, that is Jasprit Bumrah.

Bumrah would go onto finish with figures of 6/45 to swing the pendulum in India’s favour. But, it wasn’t just about providing India an advantage in the Test. It was more than that.

Bumrah does Bumrah things

The earlier part of Day 2 in Vizag was dominated by just one man — Yashasvi Jaiswal. Jaiswal registered his maiden Test double ton, but with his dismissal in the 107th over and India eventually being dismissed for 396, the focus quickly shifted to India’s bowlers.

There might have been a few concerns regarding India’s total — while Friday was a batting paradise as far as the pitch was concerned, the same cannot be said for Saturday. England spinners, Shoaib Bashir, Rehan Ahmed and Tom Harley combined to take seven wickets between them, and even in England’s first innings, the spinners weren’t absent from the limelight with Kuldeep Yadav and Axar Patel taking a combined tally of four scalps.

However, there was something about Bumrah’s accuracy and sharpness with the ball. He’s put up these kind of performances before, and he did it again on Saturday. Basically, it was just Bumrah doing Bumrah things in Vizag.

On Saturday, Bumrah hardly put any foot wrong. Much like James Anderson on Day 1, Bumrah ended as the most economical bowler (2.80) among all Indian bowlers. He did not give away even a single extra. Bumrah kept decimating the opposition batters with inswinging and outswinging yorkers on a pitch that is supposed to produce more turn for the spinners than swing for the pacers.

It, however, wasn’t an easy start for Bumrah by any means. Bumrah got hit by Crawley for three consecutive boundaries in the ninth over. This was at a stage when Crawley and Duckett were looking in good touch with the bat until the latter’s dismissal in the 11th over.

Despite this, Bumrah kept bowling tight lines and lengths in a bid to get that much-needed breakthrough courtesy his first wicket. In the 26th over, Bumrah finally broke through. After bowling a series of outswingers to Root initially, this time, Bumrah decided to trick Root into playing with the reverse swing. Root was in fact two minds whether to play the shot or not, but eventually found out the tough way, after nicking towards Shubman Gill at slip.

And to dismiss Ollie Pope, it was even more iconic. Once again, it was the reverse swing that was at play from Bumrah, only that this was a dangerous yorker that you could miss with the blink of an eye. The reverse swinging yorker from Bumrah landed at the core of middle and leg stump, making it unplayable for Pope to deal with the pacer.

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