Jasprit Bumrah is widely regarded as the best death overs bowler in contemporary cricket. The consistency and accuracy, with which he delivers pin point Yorkers on demand, is something that very few can pull off.
In this throwback post, we will cover one such outstanding bowling of Bumrah. In this, he managed to win the game for India. That too, from a near impossible situation.
England was touring India for a long tour of 5 tests, 3 T20 and 3 ODI. India had already won the test series by a margin of 4-0. They thrashed the opposition in ODI by a margin of 2-1.
A T20 game
In the T20’s England started brightly and had won the first game of the series. Coming into the second game of the series, they were leading 1-0.
The second game happened at Nagpur. England won the toss and elected to field first. The decision proved to be a fruitful one. None of the Indian batsman bar KL Rahul could score freely against English bowling line up. Additionally, the English bowlers bowled with a lot of discipline.
The opener KL Rahul was the highest run scorer for India as he himself made almost half of the team’s total runs of 144. Rahul scored 71 runs.
For England, Chris Jordan was the pick of the bowlers as he took 3 wickets for 22 runs in 4 overs.
Solid reply
A target of 145 was a modest one. Moreover, England had some explosive hitters in their ranks right down up to number 8.
However, Ashish Nehra broke open the game for India. He dismissed both the openers in a span of 2 deliveries in the fourth over. Morgan and Root then provided the stability to English innings. They added 43 runs in close to 7 overs before Morgan was dismissed.
Ben Stokes, the next man in, played some scintillating strokes in his innings of 38. He hit 2 fours and 2 sixes while playing just 27 balls. His innings almost made sure that England would emerge victorious.
By the time Stokes was dismissed, English team needed only 28 runs of the final three overs. It further got reduced to a mere 8 runs in the final 6. On top of that England still had 6 wickets in hand with the set batsman Joe Root on crease. An England victory almost seemed a formality.
Boom Boom Bumrah
Enter Bumrah for the final over of the game. Moreover, with just 8 runs to defend, Bumrah had his task cut out.
The first ball he bowled was a cutter at slow pace which got stuck into the pitch. Root decided to pull but he missed it as the ball thudded his pads and he was quickly adjudged LBW.
New batsman Moeen Ali took a single off the next ball while Jos Buttler swiped across another cutter, missing it completely. It resulted in a dot.
Finishing touch
The coup de grace of Buttler came the next ball as he was cleaned up by a quick length ball.
Another slower cutter was received by the new batsman who again missed it but the batsmen ran through for a bye. Till now, just 2 runs had come off the first 5 balls and had brought two wickets.
With 6 runs required of final ball, Bumrah ran in to bowl to Moeen Ali. However, much like previous 5 deliveries, the batsman could only swipe and miss. The dot ball meant India had won the game by 5 runs.
Bumrah was the hero of that victory.
Watch the video of the epic last over:
