Best spell of fast bowling from an Indian in a long time: Bharat Arun lauds Bumrah's Antigua fury
Team India bowling coach Bharat Arun lavished praise on Jasprit Bumrah after his fiery spell against West Indies in the first Test in Antigua.
Bumrah, in minutes of fury, knocked over five wickets in less than an hour as India reduced Windies to 50/9 in the fourth innings of the first Test, which the visitors won by a mammoth 318 runs. Bumrah ended with figures of 5/7 from 8 overs as the hosts struggled to deal with his tormenting yorkers and raging deliveries.
This five-wicket haul was Bumrah's fourth in Test cricket and now he has five-wicket haul in England, Australia, South Africa and West Indies. Following the heroics, Bumrah also broke into the top 10 in the ICC Test rankings for bowlers and Arun lauded the 25-year-old for his accurate bowling.
"It was the best spell of fast bowling I have seen from an Indian in a long time," Bharat Arun said on Wednesday, as quoted by Cricbuzz.
"He is bowling consistently at over 140 clicks at any given point of time, and his action is not a very orthodox action. So it takes the batsman a second longer to pick up. Also, he is very accurate which makes him so potent."
"Bumrah is a skilful bowler. He is aware of the situations and he has adjusted himself beautifully to every situation. Even if you see the lengths he bowled in the first and the second innings, it is obviously a lot more different. He has pitched the ball a lot more up and he was getting appreciable movement," Arun added.
The Ahmedabad-born pacer also got praise from one of the greatest of the games following his spell against the West Indies.
Curtly Ambrose on Wednesday also spoke about how well he adjusts his lengths and also compared him to his compatriot Courtney Walsh.
"He's good at varying his lengths, depending on the surfaces and batsmen. I saw that in the World Cup, how he adjusted (and altered) his lengths according to the conditions and batsmen. That makes life difficult for batsmen.
"In this regard, he reminds me a bit of Courtney (Walsh) a bit. He was wonderful in sizing up the length and bowling accordingly.
"At times, he rekindles memories of our prime. The pace, aggression, the hostility, the craft. The way he outclasses the batsmen, the way he out-thinks them. He could have been one of us, he's so complete a bowler that he could have played in any era," Curtly Ambrose told the Indian Express.
While Andy Roberts went a step further and said that Bumrah is the best Indian pacer he has ever seen.
"In my time, it was all spin. Good ones, but they wouldn't win you matches overseas. India had Kapil Dev and some others, but we never thought they could produce someone as lethal as Bumrah. He's the best Indian fast bowler I have seen.
"It's the strangest action that I have seen on a cricket field. I need to study that for a longer time to understand the mechanics of his action. But if he were born here back in our days, we would have had him.
"A freak was the only element missing in our bowling line-up. In fact, Bumrah is the only variety of bowler we had never produced. Then I don't think even India would produce one like him again," Andy Roberts said.
Bumrah, after making his debut in January 2018 in South Africa, has so far played 11 Tests and bagged 55 wickets with a strike-rate of 46.7.
