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It all began with the day’s first delivery. Before it could reach the wicketkeeper, Jasprit Bumrah watched it skitter through at shin height and bounce.
It was helpful to India in a way. Their pre-match concerns about Kanpur’s low bounce were validated, and they had chosen a far more confident slip cordon position—quite close to the bat. Yashasvi Jaiswal fell for the opening wicket for Bangladesh at gully, just 14 meters away.
Bumrah works really hard to advance the ball. He is difficult to deal with in part because of his actions, but not entirely. The remaining portion is derived from his wrist snap, which enables him to bury the seam into the pitch and extract every available assistance, including bounce and movement. The tone for the remainder of his day was established by the fact that despite all of that, the ball hardly lifted off the ground.
Generally speaking, being Jasprit Bumrah is phenomenal. It wasn’t, only this one time.
To begin his spell, he bowled three straight maidens, leaving Zakir Hasan bouncing around, not knowing which of his edges was in danger. In his nine overs, he also gave up 17 leaves. He was a little erratic. Despite being a genius, he still made 22 false shots, or one false shot for every three balls, and beat the bat three times, or six times more frequently than any other bowler.
Even his excellent effort eventually caused Bumrah to become a little frustrated. Rather than stick to his typical strategy of settling on a length and gradually exploiting the batter’s technique, he was actually trying to obtain wickets. He continued moving like a go-between attempting to catch up in an over’s fight, going from over the wicket to around and back again.
The ball might have passed through more quickly and carried through higher on a harder surface, giving him greater threat potential. The hitters appeared to have an extra second to react to all the sideways movement he was receiving on this one.
However, India’s bowling attack was deep enough, and when combined, they put enough pressure on Bangladesh to keep them from winning the game. They made the assumption that the three-man pace attack would be able to take advantage of the cloudy circumstances when they decided to bowl first at the toss. And the fact that their fast bowlers are training as hard as they are during the home season in preparation for a major tour of Australia can’t be all that awful.
For the time being, Kanpur is still the focus. India’s fast bowlers will be highlighted by the weather, and Bumrah will return on day two—assuming the rain holds off—to provide more magic deliveries. Actually, everyone strolled off to the dressing room on the back of one, and Bumrah, seeing it slip by, threw back his head and partly smiled, refusing to take the outside edge. Being him is nice most of the time. It wasn’t, only this one time.