Jasprit Bumrah is a phenomenon. If you want social media moments, he’s got them – try the Ollie Pope yorker for size. If you want match-winning spells, zoom out a touch, and you’ll find two in the same Vizag Test. And if you want genius, format-crossing excellence – well, just take his whole career.
Ignore the intangibles of his thrilling action, toe-crushing yorkers and electric pace – the numbers alone speak plenty loud enough. Since the start of 2018, nobody is touching Bumrah across formats. His Test bowling average is the best of anyone with 100+ wickets. His average CricViz Bowling Impact in ODIs is the best of anyone to bowl 2000 balls; in T20s, it’s the best of anyone to bowl 1000 balls. Bumrah isn’t simply the best all-round bowler across formats – he’s the best in every format.
The underlying numbers underpin this excellence as well. Since the start of 2018, when Bumrah debuted, no bowler in Test cricket has been as threatening. His Expected Average of 22.6 is the best, meaning that based on ball-tracking data, the deliveries he has bowled – regardless of who has faced them, or how the batter played them – are more dangerous than any other operator in the game.
This dominance of three increasingly different versions of the game speaks to the breadth of his skills in Bumrah’s repertoire.
In red-ball cricket, he can target the stumps as much as anyone around, at a pace and with movement that others can’t match. In ODIs, he can pepper those throughout 60 deliveries that challenge with variation of pace, built on a foundation of excellent control – very few seamers can go beyond his ability to find a good line outside off stump. In T20s, it’s a highlights reel of the whole lot, a carefully chosen assortment of the very best he has to offer.
When you look to history, to identify him as part of the fast bowling lineage of the previous 150 years, there are few who stand out. There are technical predecessors of course, among the unorthodox and physically gifted: your Thompsons, your Ahktars, your Malingas. You can draw Bumrah alongside Steyn and the legendary Pakistani pair in terms of the range of skills on show, the reverse swing. He’s yet to reach the stage of his career where the body begins to demand less fire and more precision, to bang away with the accuracy of Anderson, Philander, Asif – but it doesn’t feel beyond him.
Right now, there is not an obvious limit to what Bumrah could achieve as an individual. He is older than you think, at 30; as said, his own fitness may intervene at some point and force him to adapt. But while lesser bowlers may struggle to overcome a loss of speed, there is a robustness to Bumrah’s skillset which invites you to expect longevity. That average will rise, naturally – it can’t really get any lower – but he’s got a fair bit of room above him before he hits the next group of greats on the average lists.
However – if he retired right now, he has a very strong case to be the best all-format seamer the game has seen. Clearly, the opportunity for that title is a quirk of history, given T20’s recent arrival has added another box to tick for the great ODI and Test bowlers of the 1980s and 1990s. But plenty of others have been given that opportunity, and right now, it’s Bumrah who feels closest to the crown.
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