Cricket is a game of distance as much as it’s a game of time. What difference do a few inches make in 22 yards? Well, a batsman falling a few inches short to an accurate throw can be the difference between winning and losing. Ask a certain Chetan Sharma, and he will tell you the tale of how a few inches changed his life forever. Chetan Sharma, who represented India in 23 Test matches and 65 ODIs, was a handy all-rounder with 148 wickets, Tests and ODIs combined, and an ODI century to his credit. His hat-trick against New Zealand in Nagpur in 1987 was the first one in World Cups. But, Sharma is better known for failing to get one ball right, by a few inches! The incident which happened in Sharjah on April 18, 1986 would go on to become a part of cricketing folklore. Needing four runs off the last ball, a much tougher ask those days, Pakistan perhaps had their best bet in Javed Miandad facing it. Understandably, a young Sharma went for the best delivery known to mankind―the yorker― and missed it by a few inches. Miandad, who was batting on 110, had no problems in sending the full toss over the boundary ropes for a six! Pakistan won a tense Austral-Asia Cup final in the most dramatic fashion.
Thirty-three years since, Sharma says that he is still haunted by the memories of that misfired yorker. So many cricket-crazy kids of my generation have grown up hearing this story a million times. In fact, Sharma erring by a few inches also saw a shift in the cricketing fortunes of the two countries at Sharjah. Pakistan became a dominant force at the desert venue ever since and its domination would go on till the dawn of the next century. And when Jasprit Bumrah cleaned up a wagging Bangladeshi tail and dashed their hopes with a couple of perfect yorkers last week, the joy it gave me was profound. Here is an Indian bowler capable of producing perfect yorkers at will when it matters the most and win matches for his country. Bumrah is a priceless find.
Jasprit Bumrah is a thinking bowler | AP
When he first came into the Indian side and started being successful rather quickly, Bumrah reminded me of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not possessing the looks of a conventional movie ‘hero’ and an unusual accent to go with it, Schwarzenegger was an unlikely star, but it’s difficult to imagine anyone else and any other accent in the movie The Terminator. With a short run-up, a funny hop, a rigid non-bowling arm and a release with a slanting arm action, Bumrah isn’t exactly pleasing to the eye, but one can’t imagine Team India without him at the moment. When I first saw him in action, I said to myself, “The coaches should stay away from this lad and just let him bowl!” He is a natural (even a freak), but an invaluable asset. His ‘guru’ at Mumbai Indians, Lasith Malinga, will be mighty proud of what his understudy has achieved in a short span of time at the international level.
It is not very often that you see talent marrying hard work, and in Bumrah’s case, you see a happy marriage of the two―something that people who have known him from the junior days testify. Then there is his persona. There is no nonsense in the name of ‘a fast bowler’s aggression’ and that’s good to see. He remains simple and down to earth despite his rapid rise and that could be attributed to some difficult lessons life taught him at a young age.
One can do all kinds of analysis from all the video footage, but how to play a convincing scoring shot of a perfectly landed yorker is still a mystery. It’s a difficult art, but Jasprit Bumrah seems to have mastered it with near perfection. Not that he is a one dimensional bowler―he is a thinking bowler who is fast, accurate and has effective swing both ways―but he is the yorker man of India. Bowling a yorker in a crunch moment of the game can be a risky proposition. One needs to get it absolutely spot-on. A few inches can make you a ‘hero’ or a ‘zero’, as Chetan Sharma would agree, but Bumrah gets it right more often than not. There have been some stellar performances from vice-captain Rohit Sharma, but it’s Jasprit Bumrah who is largely responsible for India’s comfortable entry into the semifinal. He is Virat Kohli’s go-to man and one hopes he continues to land those yorkers perfectly. The captain as well as a billion Indians will be thanking God for Bumrah.
Sreeduth is a sports broadcaster, management consultant, quiz show host, columnist and a noted percussionist as well.
