India pacer Jasprit Bumrah has been bowling exceptionally well ever since his comeback to international cricket following the back surgery.
The right-arm quick played an instrumental role in India’s Asia Cup 2023 triumph and then made the batters dance to his tunes in the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup last year.
Bumrah then carried on his brilliance to Test cricket on the tour of South Africa and in the home series against England. He is currently plying his trade in the IPL 2024 season for Mumbai Indians.
On Thursday (April 11), Bumrah ran through the RCB batting line-up and claimed a five-wicket haul (5-21) to lay foundation of MI’s comprehensive seven-wicket victory.
After the game, Bumrah reflected on his match-winning spell and said: “I'm very happy with the outcome. But I will not say I had always thought of taking a five-for. Wicket was sticking in the first 10 overs. I observed that quickly and tried to use it to my advantage. One of those days where things went in my favour and catches went to hand. Very happy with the contribution.”
He went on to say that bowling is a tough art, especially in T20 cricket and it's important not to be a one-trick pony.
“In this format, it's anyway very harsh on the bowlers so you have to have all kinds of skills. This is what I train for. Come this situation, I should have different options. I should not be a one-trick pony, and can't just rely on yorker because there will be days where my execution is off so I can rely on other deliveries. Everyone is doing research and data, so people start to line you up. So I wanted to have different skills,” he added at the post-match presentation.
Bumrah revealed how he would take lessons from his bad days, saying he would sit and analyse videos of his bowling and try to improve with every match.
“Bowling is tough because you will have to take a beating, you will have to have bad days to learn from it. What I've done in the past, whenever I've had bad days, I've watched videos the next day to see what didn't work, why it didn't work, what is the way I've been playing. All of these things, you have to be with the curve. Nowadays, you just cannot come on the day and say okay I'll do this, maybe this will work,” he remarked.
“For me, preparation is always the key. When you prepare hard, you put yourself under pressure in the nets. You bowl to batters in the nets who hit big sixes, find out how you react to pressure. Then you start finding answers. That is very very important for me - to keep pushing yourself in training. Then on game day, you have answers that okay when I had similar pressure in training, I had answers,” he explained.
Jasprit Bumrah, who earned the Player-of-the-Match award, also disclosed that he does his research on batters before a game.
“I do my research and see where the batter is strong. Sometimes the wicket is sticky, you don't always need to bowl the yorker. You can use the bouncer, you can use the slower ball. So you don't need to use all tricks on one day,” he stated.
“You have to understand where the game is going, what the wicket is. There's no ego in this format. Even if you can bowl 145kph, but the wicket demands slower balls then you have to do that. All of these things are important. It's not just one-trick pony - aim at the stumps and go pole hunting,” Bumrah concluded.
Coming to the match, Mumbai Indians restricted RCB to 196/8 on a flat pitch, courtesy of Bumrah’s five-wicket haul.
In reply, the hosts overhauled the target without breaking a sweat. While Rohit Sharma (38 off 24) and Ishan Kishan (69 off 34) set the tone with an opening stand of 101 runs, Suryakumar Yadav (52 off 19) and Hardik Pandya (21* off 6) batted aggressively right from the word go to seal the deal in 15.3 overs.
Mumbai Indians will next face defending champions Chennai Super Kings at the Wankhede Stadium on April 14.
(With Cricbuzz Inputs)
