Former Australia captain Allan Border heaped huge praise on Indian pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah ahead of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Team India has played dominant cricket across the globe in the past couple of years and it’s their pace-attack who played a crucial role in achieving that. With quality pacers like Jasprit Bumrah, Ishant Sharma, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav and Bhuvneshwar, the team has started believing in itself to pick 20-wickets in red-ball cricket irrespective of the conditions.
Border claims he is most impressed with Bumrah in current India’s pace attack.
“It’s incredible, his rise through the ranks just out of probably IPL. It started there and he has just taken the world of cricket by storm. He has an unusual action, everyone thought he is going to struggle with injuries and things like that. He has had a little bit of a niggle of late,” Border said during a discussion on Australia’s Cricket Network
“He is the real deal, isn’t he? He just has the awkward action but he bowls at good pace, so not the classical way of doing things. It is very much an Indian thing really, they just let the kids develop their own styles.”
Back in the days, India relied heavily on the spinners to win the Test matches but when it came to overseas tours, the conditions didn’t support them much. But now with the current line-up, the Indian team opted to play with one spinner in the crucial contests.
“India really needed to develop some fast bowlers, didn’t they? Every time they toured anywhere, they were presented with grassy pitches, pace-friendly pitches. So the days of playing three or four spinners are long gone,” Border pointed out.
The legendary Australia captain further talked about Bumrah’s explosive bowling action.
“Bumrah is an interesting one, because he has the shuffling run-up to the crease and really just explodes out of the hand. He can get some serious pace too; he can go to 140-plus,” he added.