With a skip and a stutter, another Bumrah miracle

If you were watching him for the first time, you may think it is a miracle he delivers the ball at all. His action could be a prank, or a send-up of someone in a Lagaan sequel

- Rahul Bhattacharya

Jasprit Bumrah is the best bowler I have ever seen. There's a slight cheat in this claim. I don't mean that he is better than everybody else, only that he is as good as the best. I have no qualifiers to offer except my limitations of judgement and experience.

This list includes Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis of Pakistan, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh of West Indies, the South Africans Allan Donald and Dale Steyn, England's Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad, Glenn McGrath and Pat Cummins of Australia. If we include spinners, and why should we not, throw in Shane Warne, Muttiah Muralitharan, Anil Kumble, Ravichandran Ashwin.

Some of these great bowlers have taken a thousand international wickets or more. Bumrah is at (as yet) only a third of the way there. But what a third! As we might exclaim of a virtuoso sitarist or a wonder-working masseur: uske haathon mein jaadoo hai! He is a chef's kiss of a bowler.

Let's look at the two moments of magic in Ahmedabad on Saturday. Brought on mid-innings for his second spell, Bumrah slipped to the well-set Mohammad Rizwan a delivery that beat him with change of pace, dip, turn - the tricks a master off-spinner might do in his adversary with. Bumrah thought to try this because he'd noticed Ravindra Jadeja getting a few deliveries to grip and turn.