Cricket World Cup 2019: India mourn the present but future is bright with Jasprit Bumrah

India's peculiar jewel is very swiftly staking a claim to be his country’s greatest white-ball bowler of all-time

Jasprit Bumrah turns at his mark. His is a short run-up, an odd one, full of stutter and contemplation. It is the staccato canter of an apprehensive colt, a skip here, a skip there, neither rhythm nor rhyme as he approaches the crease.

Out the right arm extends, ball gripped tightly at the end of a lengthy limb locked straight, and down again it falls as he leaps to deliver, widening his approach slightly. The arm comes round and down and the ball finally comes out, later than it should, arm whipping between his legs as he begins his follow through.

It is a back of a length ball in and around off-stump, with a hint of away movement and steep bounce. Martin Guptill fends at it, Virat Kohli takes a sharp catch. New Zealand are 1-1. India are away.

Everything about Bumrah is awkward. The angular body. The long limbs. The run-up. The release. And he is an awkward customer with which to deal.

But there is logic to his idiosyncrasy; artwork in his quirk.

His peculiar run-up and late release point messes with a batsman’s trigger, disrupts their movement into the shot. It makes Bumrah feel quicker, and he’s quick enough as is.

He is a complete bowler, a bowler that can defeat you with kick from back of length, balls that leap at the handle of your bat, or skid the ball on from his wide of the crease delivery point. His skiddiness makes the batsman consider every shouldering of the arms for fear of an ignominious departure. Guptill nearly fell foul of such a leave two balls before his dismissal, surviving by an inch or so.

He can nip the ball and swing the ball. He can knock your head off with short, sharp bouncers. He has refined his yorker to under the tutelage of Lasith Malinga at the Mumbai Indians to such a degree that there is now no greater exponent in limited overs cricket, aided by the natural angle his action creates.

Akimbo limbs make his variations tough to pick. He has developed an off-cutter and a devilish leg-cutter. He dismissed Shaun Marsh at the MCG during the winter with a vicious dipping back-of-the-hand ball on the stroke of lunch on his way to match figures of 9-86, comfortably the best by any Indian seamer in Australia.

Bumrah averages below 22 in all three international formats, 21.88 in ODI cricket, 21.89 in his short Test career. The somewhat divergent qualities required to excel across the formats in the modern era make such bowlers relative rarities.

Australia have two in Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins, though neither has played a huge amount of high-level T20 cricket in the last year-or-so. Kagiso Rabada, lacklustre World Cup returns aside, is another. Jofra Archer will be a fourth in the not too distant future, assuming England recognise his red ball potential sooner rather than later. Bumrah makes five. That’s it.

Bumrah had a fine tournament for India (Getty)

India’s World Cup may have ended in semi-final disappointment, but Bumrah’s tournament finished strongly. He is very swiftly staking a claim to be his country’s greatest white-ball bowler of all-time.

Among pace bowlers to have take 100 ODI wickets or more, only seven have done so at a better average than Bumrah: Joel Garner, Starc, Dennis Lilee, Shane Bond, Michael Holding, Richard Hadlee, Allan Donald. That’s mighty fine company, and at 25, there could quite conceivably be more to come from Bumrah.

And while India will reflect on a tournament that ended much too soon and look to the future, in Bumrah they have a genuine superstar, the jewel in the modern day crown of fast bowling.

To see Bumrah bowl is to see cricket at its expressive best. His is a hugely inefficient action, the kind that, you feel, and with all due respect to the fine work the ECB do at Loughborough and elsewhere, would never make it through the English pathway. It is an action honed by gully cricket, a man figuring out how he best gets the ball down accurately and at real pace. It matters not that it is unconventional – that is part of its charm.

Bumrah bedazzled batsmen throughout the tournament (Reuters)

There are others in this Indian side of similar manner. Rishabh Pant rarely swings from a secure base, is often loose of grip and has a tendency to force to the leg-side regardless of line. But it works, more often than not, because they back themselves, they back their ability, textbook or otherwise. From an early age they are encouraged to play naturally, find their own technique.

It is asked not of them what they can’t do but what they can do. To see an Indian playing cricket is to see a Fijian playing rugby, to see a Brazilian playing football, the most natural of skillsets, a single-minded desire to be great at a sport so important to the very fabric of your national culture. It is to see a translation of youthful exuberance, of the simplistic origins of sporting excellence on beaches, in gullies, in the Favelas. The arenas have changed; the sports have not.

There will not be another Jasprit Bumrah. His action is hardly replicable, try as Virat Kohli might. No coach will be encouraging their young fast bowler to bowl more like Bumrah, to punctuate their run up with such stutters.

But there will be more like him. Thank goodness for that.