Did world’s top-ranked Test bowler not meet expectations during the recent India-England Test series? Irfan Pathan thinks so.
Jasprit Bumrah, the world’s no.1 Test bowler, played in three of the five-match
series as part of his workload management. He finished with 14 wickets and was the tour’s fourth highest wicket-taker despite playing two matches less. Pretty impressive.
However, it’s another fact that India lost two of the contests that Bumrah was part of and drew another. While it may have been just a coincidence but for Pathan, a senior bowler carries responsibility of winning matches for his team something which Bumrah failed to do in England.
The former India allrounder rated Bumrah 6 out of 10 for his contribution.
“Bumrah will get six out of ten. Why? The reason is that when you are a senior player, there is a lot of responsibility on you to win matches. He played in three Tests, and India did not win any of them,” Pathan said on his YouTube channel.
“Let us go back to the first Test. He took five wickets in the first innings but did not get a single wicket in the second innings (while defending 371 runs). At that crucial time, when your main match-winner is expected to step up and win the game, it is up to him to find a way, whether it is over the wicket, around the wicket, yorkers, slower balls, or bouncers, to create pressure. In the Leeds Test, we did not see that pressure being built. England ended up scoring heavily, and Bumrah did not take a single wicket, which was a bit surprising. And this did not happen just once,” he added.
Pathan then noted that there were moments when the team needed another over from Bumrah in a spell but claims the 31-year-old “held back a little.”
“There were moments, like when a sixth over was needed. I spoke about this during commentary as well. Joe Root had been dismissed by him 11 times, and in that Lord’s Test, Bumrah bowled five overs. Just one more over, the sixth, could have pushed harder. I felt he held back a little there. There was also some pick-and-choose, which I have always been against, and that was visible too,” he said.
Pathan though admitted Bumrah performed and got two five-wicket hauls too but didn’t live up to the expectations.
“To be fair, whenever he played, he did perform. He took a five-wicket haul and got his name on the Lord’s honours board. But when you are the number one bowler, there is an expectation of number one-level performance, and I felt he did not quite live up to that,” Pathan concluded.
