COMETH THE HOUR, COMETH BUMRAH

Back from an injury-enforced break, the pace ace has worked his magic in the IPL, leaving batters battered and bruised; he has been at the forefront of MI's revival in the 2025 campaign and will need to be at his best as India aims for its first Test series win in England since 2007

- 

The result was a foregone conclusion, a place in the final four assured. On strike was a left-handed No. 11 who was only batting in that position because he couldn't come in any lower he averages 5.93 (with the bat) in 284 T20s.

But watching Jasprit Bumrah thundering in at the Wankhede Stadium on Wednesday night, you wouldn't have guessed any of it. You wouldn't have guessed, for instance, that Delhi Capitals needed 60 for victory off 11 deliveries. You wouldn't have guessed that Mustafizur 'Fizz' Rahman, him with a T20 strike-rate of 72.59, was on strike. You wouldn't have guessed that as far as stakes were concerned, there was nothing left.

Thing is, Bumrah doesn't focus on the batter's pedigree, credentials or reputation. He doesn't get affected by such mundane things as match situations, he certainly doesn't know what it is to take it easy. Bumrah is as much a perfectionist as there can be. To him, only the three stumps that the batter was zealously trying to guard loomed. Talk about narrow focus.

From round the stumps, Bumrah unleashed a thunderbolt, straight and radar-directed, full yorker, they call it which zeroed in on and rattled middle stump. More accomplished left-handed batters would have struggled to lay bat to ball. The Fizz? Well, you can imagine...

In his previous over, with the game done and dusted following a magical spell of left-arm spin from Mitchell Santner, Bumrah doled out the perfect two-card trick to a flummoxed, hapless Madhav Tiwari, the 21-year-old from Madhya Pradesh on his IPL debut. A quick short ball that got big on the batter and beat him for pace, the attempted pull lumbering off the splice over mid-wicket for a brace, was the precursor to the slower yorker that dipped wickedly at the last possible instant to strike off-pole.