A back of a length ball darting into the batsmen’s chest. A mean bouncer that sent the neck guard of the helmet flying. A rapid delivery nearly brushing the outside half of the off stump.
Day three saw Jasprit Bumrah bowl from both ends – and mix it up. He didn’t pick up wickets, but everything he did looked calculated, pre-planned, well thought out.
There is a reason for that. After day two, during the interview with captain Virat Kohli, Bumrah said there is a lot of communication between the bowling team. He reiterated that point at Sabina Park where West Indies were already one down in a chase of 468.
“Ishant [Sharma] has played a lot more cricket than all of us, [Mohammed] Shami has played a lot of cricket, I am the new guy, so I try and ask questions,” Bumrah said on Sunday. “I ask them, they’ve played here before, so ‘what works in different conditions?’ ‘If the wicket is not doing anything what should we do?’ ‘what different plans are to be there,’ so all these different communication goes on including the captain and the vice-captain, everybody discusses, everybody has their own plans, so all of these things are going on when you play.”
Though he has run through the West Indies line-up twice in this series, Bumrah predicted tougher times ahead.
“Now the wicket has gotten a little better. So, movement has gotten less than the previous innings. We have to bowl well, create pressure from all ends, so that will help us to be in [a good position],” he said.
That India have dominated this game is in part due to Bumrah’s hair-raising form. He took 6 for 16 in the first innings, including a hat-trick, which was a credit to his ability to assess conditions quickly.
“So in bouncy wickets,” he said, “you can be greedy and you look to bowl short but you should not do that – you should bowl in good areas, create pressure and try and bowl full, so that was the plan going into the first innings. We were just trying to assess the situation as soon as possible and try and bowl accordingly.”
“First innings I changed my end because the breeze was going from this end to that end and we wanted to use the inswinger and see how it goes. We tried to do that and it worked. We pitched the ball up.”
At a point during the over when Bumrah got his hat-trick, the stump mic picked up Kohli reacting to one of his deliveries with, “what a bowler, man! What a bowler.” In response to that, Bumrah said: “The captain gives you a lot of confidence, that gives you a lot of self-belief. When you bowl, you can express yourself, you can try whatever you want to do. That gives you a lot of confidence, not only me but each and every bowler is being backed by him so much. As a bowling unit we are very happy and then we have the freedom to do what we want.”
Looking ahead, he said the Indian bowling unit is in sync and working very well together – something he hopes will help them improve and bring more success as a team.
“We have done a lot of hard work and last year we played a lot of away matches, so lot of camaraderie is there, a lot of backing is there, we back each other whenever things are not going well – even if things are going well we discuss what can we do better, so that was the plan going forward. We got a good relationship all of us, we want to get better every year. It’s a good relationship and we are working hard and hopefully these processes will bring more results.”
Source: ESPN Crickinfo