Veteran England pacer James Anderson has lauded India pacer Jasprit Bumrah for his amazing spell in the second Test of the ongoing five-match series. India leads the series 3-1 with only one more Test to go which will be played in Dharamshala from March 7.
England had come into the second Test in Vizag after a 28-run win in the first encounter in Hyderabad. India batted first and posted 396 with Yashasvi Jaiswal making 209, while James Anderson picked three wickets.
England replied with 253 as Jasprit Bumrah blew them away with figures of 6/45. Shubman Gill then made 104 in the second innings as India posted 255 runs on the board and set England 399 runs to win the match.
Though Zak Crawley made his second fifty in the match, England could only muster 292 runs and lost the Test by 106 runs. Bumrah picked three more scalps in the second innings as well, removing Jonny Bairstow, Ben Foakes, and Tom Hartley. Bumrah was named the Player of the Match for his effort.
Asked about Bumrah's match-winning performance in the second Test against England, Anderson said, "With someone of his quality you expect that standard from him. You know that reverse swing can play a big part in India and he's a great exponent of it. He's got a good pace and is very accurate, and very consistent. That yorker we saw to Ollie Pope, he's got that up his sleeve as well. It's not a fluke that he's got to number one in the world. He's a world-class bowler and from our point of view we weren't surprised that he put up a performance like that."
The seasoned Englishman added in an interview with JioCinema, "There are not many better bowlers than Bumrah, Shami and Siraj. They're world-class bowlers. You put Ishant Sharma in there as well, and that's a really strong bowling attack."
"The way Bumrah's bowled, I think, has been amazing to watch. That reverse swing spell in the second Test was one of the best you'll see. For me, I think there's still people out there wanting to learn the skills and it's not easy to do,” he added.
James Anderson also said that he missed Virat Kohli in this series as the ace batter withdrew due to the birth of his second child.
"You always want to play against the best players. And it's been a shame that he's not been a part of the series. We have had some great battles over the years,” Anderson said.
James Anderson, 41, is also the player with the second most Tests in history, with 184 games under his belt and 698 wickets to his name. He talked about his inspiration during his early years and said that he watched Zaheer Khan bowl a lot.
"For me, Zaheer Khan was someone I used to watch a lot to try and learn from. How he used the reverse swing, how he covered the ball when he ran into bowl, that's something I tried to sort of develop on the back of playing against him quite a few times here," Anderson told JioCinema.
On comparing his longevity to other sporting legends, Anderson said, "Yeah, I guess you do look at things like that, but to be honest, I just go with the feel of me and my body. I don't feel like I'm 41 years and 200 days old. You know, I still feel young. I can keep up with the young guys in training. I can still bowl at the speeds that I want to, I can still deliver the skills that I want to. So, for me, that's the most important thing. Age is just a number and it's pretty irrelevant from my thought process."
(PTI inputs)
