Test cricket is supposed to be cruel. This is a key aspect of its beauty. This thing hurts. It will seek out your weakest points and then very carefully and skilfully gouge its nails into the wound. But is it meant to be this cruel?
There was something tender, painful and even a little disturbing about what Jasprit Bumrah did to Marnus Labuschagne during the first Border-Gavaskar Test in Perth. In the space of 23 Bumrah deliveries Labuschagne was dropped, hit in the ribs, beaten five times, left completely scoreless, and basically de-cricketed, reduced to a series of strange, formless movements, stabbing at the ball like an under-gardener swatting midges in the dark.
Eventually he was dismissed lbw not playing a shot. By that point he may as well have had a baguette in his hand. If there is some comfort for Australia’s No 3 in all this then, well, at least, he wasn’t alone.
As Australia stumble, a little bruised and fractious, into the 10-day break between Perth and the second Test in Adelaide it is probably worth scrolling back through every ball of Bumrah’s new ball spell on day one. First because Australia’s top order looked utterly spooked, unable to read any of the lines, angles or movement. But mainly because it was basically a piece of art.
Australia seemed ahead of the game as the openers began their reply to India’s doomed-looking 154. At which point Bumrah decided something else was going to happen, setting off on that familiar stuttering run, a man riding an imaginary horse, coconut halves clopping. With six paces to go he still looks like he’s about to bowl off-breaks.
The gather and release is an extraordinary act of coiled self-catapult. The left arm, which used to reach up into a flamboyant disco finger-point, now leads straight down the wicket. Look closely and the right hand ends up between his legs, fingertips slapping his own buttocks, source of much of that whiplash power (his wife, Sanjana Ganesan, posted: “Great bowler, even greater booty,” on social media after Bumrah’s opening day, in its own way a legit piece of technical analysis).
From there the first ball is on Usman Khawaja’s pads. The second veers in horribly at Nathan MacSweeney’s elbow. The third is a little wider, the same action, same release, but jagging away. This is the thing with Bumrah. By this point you’re already guessing, squinting, looking for nonexistent clues.
It takes 12 deliveries to fully enter the Jasprit zone, lengths calibrated, lines locked in. Ball 13 is a full veering inswinger that takes MacSweeney’s pad first as he blocks from the crease in survival mode. It goes to a review, but Bumrah always seems to know.
And so on to the desolation of Marnus. His first ball is an in-ducker, perfect setup for the second, which holds its line, takes a thick edge and is dropped at second slip.
By now the full fog of Bumrah pressure has descended, the constant chivvying, harrying, shifts of line and angle, as close as pace bowing gets to the dismantling of an elite spin bowler, but enacted by a man who can also send one fizzing at your throat with a dip of the shoulder.
Khawaja goes next, edging to second slip. Then we get one for the reels, Steve Smith dismissed first ball by the perfect snaking in-ducker, the ball striking his pad flush with a lovely deep thunk, Smith so tangled he looks by the end as if he is trying to use his bat as a pogo stick.
Through all this Marnus is leaving and flinching. He ducks a bouncer fitfully. He shouts “NO RUN” after blocking one, like a man trying very hard to find some familiar sounds and shape and colours, a day that makes sense.
This isn’t normal. Yes, Labuschagne has something of the nerd-goof eccentric even in his best moments. Nobody this good at batting has ever done bad batting so well. But he also averages 48 in Tests and is one of the great modern practitioners against the new ball.
In that first innings he was finally out to Mohammed Siraj for two off 52 balls. In the second he became the final note in an equally visceral Bumrah opening spell. This really was a beauty. Labuschagne’s eighth ball, his second from Bumrah, full and straight, snaking in so late that he tried to leave it, but ended up falling forward in a doomed arc, landing on his wrists like a US marine being told to drop and give everyone 20. Labuschagne was so scrambled he reviewed it, which seemed appropriate as the umpire got to raise his his finger twice. Nobody has ever been this out before. It was basically an assassination in two parts.
Bumrah walked off at the end of the day with combined figures of nine overs, five for 10 against Australia’s top order. It felt at times like a category error. These are cricketers with Nasa-level reflexes, who have lived in the cocoon of elite performance from boyhood, but reduced to the level here of club cricket under-nines facing an average county tearaway on a strip of bouncy, plastic grass
This is the mark of Bumrah’s brilliance. When he’s good it feels like step change, a reinvention of the thing you thought you knew, cricketing cubism. It is no surprise in the aftermath of Australia’s 295-run shellacking – in Perth, one of the most keenly cherished repositories of the deep Australian sporting soul – that there was a sense of incredulity skirling around social media, a suspicion that this must be some kind of mistake.
Random Australian avatars on X duly trotted out the suggestion Bumrah must be chucking, that his action is protected by overlord chicanery from the Board for of Control for Cricket in India. Anyone who has actually been watching for the last six years knows this is a dead end. Bumrah isn’t a chucker. But he is a genius. And one Australia have 10 days now to solve just a little or this series is going to die a rapid death.
Bumrah really is that good. Aged 30 he has 181 Test wickets at 20.06, the lowest bowling average of anyone in the history of the sport to have played 40 Tests. He has 47 at 17 at home and 134 at 20 away.
Bumrah is of course supreme in every format. His one-day-international economy rate is 4.59. What is this, 1982? If we really want to go down this road, and sport always does, on the numbers Bumrah has a claim on being the greatest of all modern fast bowlers.
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How has he managed this? As ever the answer will tend to focus on Bumrah’s sui generis physicality. The hyperextension of his elbow is just a natural advantage, like being 6ft 7in, or having fast-twitch muscles. With the cock of the wrist and the whip of the bowling arm, it means you have a conjoined triple movement to impart speed and nip and backspin. The hyperextension means he’s releasing the ball closer to the other end. There’s little to focus on in the run-up. Joe Root likes to rock his bat up and down in time with the bowler’s feet hitting the turf. Good luck with that here.
But it is also wrong to call him a physical freak. He’s also a mental freak, super smart, an information hoarder and problem solver. And in a way that speaks to that upcoming day-night Test in Adelaide. Bumrah finds the pink ball difficult. He is yet to have a defining spell under the lights. But even his own cold, detailed analysis of why – including the difficulty of adjusting your body clock – is a clue as to why he generally succeeds. Bumrah is known for learning on the job, narrowing down where to pitch, how to find movement, solving his opponents.
It is a process Australia must now apply to Bumrah himself, who has a terrifying record at the MCG and looks perfect for the Gabba. Either way, he remains an unignorable figure. India are generally fingered as the villains, hatchet men, and all round Cluedo card killers when it comes to talk of dying formats, talent drain, eyeball fatigue. In Bumrah they have also provided us with the most magnetic single element in Test cricket right now.
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