How Do You Do It, Jasprit Bumrah?

ABOUT TWO DECADES AGO, THE LATE David Foster Wallace coined ‘Federer moment’. The term referred to a display of tennis brilliance so extraordinary, graceful or technically impossible that it redefines perceived limitations, often leaving opponents and viewers in disbelief.

I first had my own spectatorial ‘religious’ moment seven years ago on a warm December morning. In the 2018 Boxing Day Test between India and Australia, the hosts were beginning to stage a bit of a resistance, with Travis Head and Shaun Marsh having put up a 36-run partnership as the cherry went soft. With one ball to go for lunch, and you know just how perfunctory that one ball usually is, Jasprit Bumrah delivered the sucker punch of the century.

Bumrah produced a low full toss that curved towards the middle stump. Marsh, looking forward to jogging off back for a couple of quick sandwiches, attempted to block it out awkwardly. The bowler, who usually operates in the mid-140s, took nearly 30kph off the ball, forcing Marsh to play it way earlier and it trapped him right in front. The finger was up. Marsh could have a longer lunch.

Why am I overplaying a slower ball that much? Because it has to do with everything else that surrounds it. With the hype of ferocity and domination that the man who bowled that ball has created in the minds of those who play and watch him the world over. And to know that is to watch him bowl. A short run-up during which he takes a couple of walking steps, holding the ball in his hyperextended release arm. He then trots in to lean to the left and whips it out like a slingshot. The result? An unnaturally high backspin on the ball, which can do a whole phalanx of dangerous things, including crazy speed in air and an unanticipatedly closer release to the batter.

So when Bumrah rushes in with that mind-boggling run-up, leaping up in the air with his release arm extended way over the umpire’s head and eyes hawkishly fixed on the prize—and bowls a slower ball, what’s Marsh going to do? The mastery of this moment doesn’t have to do with how well he disguises it, but with the decision he makes at that stage, and its unbelievable execution.

Watching an Indian fast bowler terrify some of the best batters of a generation has been a redemption for believers of cricket. For long, the game’s been run by the batting nobility and now one of the underground men is repaying our vengeance. Not for nothing does the internet overflow with debates attempting to determine if Bumrah is the greatest ever. But somehow, all debates dull before the magnificent, singular, incomparable, absurd genius of this man.

And it’s all made even better by his everyman pretence—smiling face, regular physique, shrugging post-wicket celebration, family-man bearing (the only time I saw him truly angered was when the 19-year-old Sam Konstas infamously of a Ken Loach character, he once practised throwing bricks in open fields). I wonder what teens watching him today make of replicating his results. Unless one is starting really early like he did, it’s hard without making a mess of your joints. Because Bumrah isn’t just a biomechanical marvel.

It’s not all about brute force and speed and domination, as I learnt that December morning. Bumrah is a fox bred with a leopard—so he has both, the leopard’s predatory gifts and the combined cunning of both animals. His off-cutter to fool the English captain Harry Brook in the 2026 T20 World Cup wouldn’t be forgotten in a jiffy. Those who watched him set up Keaton Jennings in 2018 will still have goosebumps reliving the inswinger he hurled at the English opener. Having bowled a series of outswingers, Bumrah forced Jennings to shoulder arms to the fifth ball of the over. It cut back in sharply, almost like a doosra, leaving the batter plumb all ends up.

These are, of course, a few that come to mind in a career flush with reversing toe crushers, nightmare short balls and false shots induced by intelligent changes of pace. A Jasprit Bumrah yorker is a special event no matter how many times you watch him execute it. A weapon he perfected as a child in order not to wake his sleeping mother, it’s virtually impossible to block out. Its almost-legendary ability to penetrate the most impregnable of defences has the sense of mythic reckoning to it.

To quote the former English pace ace Steve Harmison, “he takes the pitch out of the equation”. No matter how modest and quite shortlivedly tried bazballing him and scooping and reverse-sweeping him all around the place). However, inside Bumrah, something else goes on entirely, as anyone with a working intelligence can surmise—the hunger for domination in a man who still retains a bit of the scrawny, bulliedat-school 10-year-old. His fiery six-fer in Perth (2024), where he forced Australia on their knees with a memorable hostile spell, was the other occasion I’ve seen Bumrah combative.

In him every 30-something finds a shred of what they wanted to be. We can feel it because those of us who grew up playing the game at the same time, hundreds of kilometres away in every direction, were once pimply, weird-voiced, constantly beleaguered boys grappling with the first invitations of identity crises. Watching Allan Donald, Brett Lee and Shane Bond making batters hop around, and hearing about Andy Roberts and Jeff Thompson strike the fear of God in anyone holding a bat, were our myths. Marvel superheroes are for those of us denigrated by the jibe ‘kid’. But Bumrah is for the ‘legends’, as memes would have it. He’s a deus ex machina we can never get enough of.

Weaponising what we had learnt from Andrew Flintoff and Dale Steyn on TV to make batters duck and cower was something this writer frequently engaged in (like something or realistic he may get about it (he’s admitted that bowling it that often in Test matches takes its toll), he’s employed the delivery to good effect. One could credit it to the format having rapidly lost its affiliation with slow, defensive, strategy-led cricket, but to expel a set batter in a manner as ceremoniously unceremonious as that—man down, stumps flying—is a release no amount of adjectives will ever do justice to.

Ask Ollie Pope. Coming off a spectacular 196 in the first Test on England’s 2024 tour to India, the stylish batter looked set in the second, and was batting on 23 when the pacer got a really full one reversing into leg. As is often wont to happen with a long-due Bumrah yorker, it breached Pope’s desperate attempt to dig it out. He was on his knees and his sticks all over the place. The ‘Bumrahstra’ had been unleashed.

And then there’s the time when Jonny Bairstow was punished for walking down to Jasprit Bumrah. Keshav Maharaj, Brydon Carse, Jason Holder… it’s a colourful victim list, and I’m not even talking white-ball cricket right now. All because a truly religious Bumrah moment is no incidental fracture in the chaos of run-scoring. It is a moment masterfully engineered and willed into being with the whip of its singular exponent’s unbelievably hyperextended release arm. And more often than not, it’s man down, stumps flying after that.

MAKING OF THE ‘BUMRAH-STRA’

We decode the biomechanics that make Jasprit Bumrah such a tough bowler to face, despite a short run-up and a regular athletic build.

How does Bumrah bowl those unplayable inswinging yorkers? Being able to give the ball a much higher number of revs helps him create a sort of Magnus Effect. Bowled full and fast, it swerves, opens the batter up and clatters into the stumps.

The Sideways Lean

Trotting in at a steady pace, he tilts to his left before delivering to create a lateral flexion of sorts. Since he has a short run-up, this allows him to deceive the batter and still whip out the ball with great force

Outstretched Arms

During the tilt, Bumrah’s arms hyperextend. The front one keeps him firm for the famed ‘whip’ and back one allowing him to land the ball a-foot-anda-half closer to the batter. The hyperextension also lets him impart insane backspin to the ball.

The Knee Brace

Unlike every other fast bowler operating today, Bumrah plants his front leg very straight on the crease, resulting in a brutal transfer of all of his body momentum to the ball. Which helps him bowl in the high 140s despite a short run-up.