T20 World Cup: Jasprit Bumrah is not just India’s greatest bowler, but its greatest match-winner

After the photo-op was done, the crowd emerged from the trance, and shook the stands with a roar of joy. And Bumrah turned around to focus on the game.

Those who have watched Bumrah in the last month wouldn’t need photographic reminders of how the fast bowler shaped the destiny and destination of the T20 World Cup trophy. In fact, they could retrace and relive the entire tournament through his spells, through the Bumrah timeline, through the magical balls he had designed. Take him away from the tournament, the fate changes and the narrative falls apart.

India’s Jasprit Bumrah, right, celebrates the dismissal of Australia’s Travis Head during an ICC Men’s T20 World Cup cricket match at Darren Sammy National Cricket Stadium in Gros Islet, Saint Lucia, Monday, June 24, 2024. AP/PTI

His memorable wickets capture the story of India’s journey — the Harry Tector bouncer, the Babar Azam straightener; the Mohammed Rizwan nip-backer, the Rahmanullah Gurbaz cutter, the Najmul Shanto slanter, the Travis Head slower ball, the Phil Salt dipping cutter, the Reeza Hendricks away-seamer. Just watch these balls in isolation, and you feel contented, as though you have watched the whole World Cup. You can start a clip over and over again, without any context or purpose, and still discover a new layer or meaning. The descriptions capture the soul of his art too — he used a variety of balls to nab his wickets. If you have watched him, you would realise he has adopted a variety of lengths too.

It’s impossible to recall one bowler producing so many great balls in a single series, let alone a format where recall value is preserved only for the most supernatural feats. Even if you take the 50-overs World Cups into consideration, the memory stops with Shane Warne’s feats in 1999 and Wasim Akram’s sorcery in the 1992 final. This World Cup was, to a bizarrely disproportionate degree, Bumrah’s World Cup. The rest were merely living through it. White-ball tournaments are perceived as batsmen’s game, but bowlers win tournaments, he emphasised. The harder the lawmakers have tried to make T20 a batsman’s game, the quicker he has made it a bowler’s field.

It’s equally impossible to remember India celebrating any other bowler in its history as they do Bumrah. If cricket is the country’s religion, the opium of its masses, the batsmen are the holy deities. Not that the country has not churned out bowlers of high pedigree. But no bowler captured the imagination or swayed the attention, or entered the collected consciousness, like Bumrah has, or been loved as limitlessly, or possessed the capacity to dictate a nation’s mood as he could. When he bowls, a country of 1.5 billion holds its breath and keeps their chores aside.

India’s greatest match-winner

He is not just the greatest bowler born in the country, but also potentially the greatest cricketer it has ever produced. He might not retire with a colossal body of stats and records like their batsmen, but he could drift into the sunshine as its greatest match-winner. And he is, without a doubt, India’s most important cricketer, not because there is a talent dearth, but because he towers above them, even his captain Rohit Sharma and talisman Virat Kohli.

This perhaps would be Bumrah’s enduring legacy, more than the wickets he has taken or the matches he was defined. That he made a bat-obsessed country fall in love with fast bowling; that he stopped his countrymen casting envious glances beyond the western frontier; that he instilled the belief that anything is possible with him around. An emperor of miracles. A fast bowling idol among batsmen, the bowler who barged into the inner sanctum of India’s cricket worshippers. The Sachin Tendulkar of the Insta-generation.

He produces the same aural effects as Tendulkar did. The cheer, the nervous silence, the riot of emotions, and an experience in itself, as he slides into his stuttering run-up. He is the man they have all come to watch.

It’s difficult to think of any Indian fast bowler being held in as much awe and fear abroad. Some have earned respect over the years, like Zaheer Khan and Javagal Srinath, or approval like Kapil Dev, but not evoked veneration as Bumrah. The Caribbean fast-bowling greats consider him as one of their own, he drives masses to the stands in Australia, England, South Africa or wherever he sets his foot.

There could not be a more format-transcending cricketing hero (and that included batsmen) of his time too. He appeases the arthouse circle, he pleases the massy-movie crowd, he belongs to the semi-art, semi-mass-group too. His genius needs no further amplification. But for the purpose of embellishing his stature, his incredible numbers could be splashed — average of 20.69 in Tests, 23.55 in ODIs, 17.74 in T20Is. At some point, bowlers sacrifice formats for longevity; or compromise intensity in some versions. But not Bumrah, any format, any country, any pitch, he is there, breathing the same intensity and incisiveness. And so he has earned his right to indulge in a bit of theatre, soak in the adulation, in a moment of quiet communion between the deity and the worshippers.