Jasprit Bumrah may forever cherish the ball he bowled to Ollie Pope on Day 2 of the 2nd India vs England Test but – he smashed two of his stumps with a vicious yorker – but the ball he bowled to Ben Stokes to get him out was equally special. Bowling round the wicket, Bumrah left Stokes shellshocked as the England captain was cleaned up, but it was the all-rounder’s expression right after the dismissal that made it even more joyous for the Indian pacer. Stokes simply dropped his bat and raised his hands in disbelief, almost saying ‘This is not done’.
This was Bumrah’s second dismissal of Stokes in the series. He had clean bowled him in the Hyderabad Test, only for a lot more with a similar delivery – the ball had come straight to him rather than showing any movement whatsoever. Sharing his true thoughts on that reaction from Stokes, Bumrah subtly took credit for the masterpiece of a delivery that he had sent down.
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“So, the ball was reversing consistently but that ball I think I wanted to bowl an away swinger but it didn’t swing at all and kept straight. So probably that’s why the reaction. He perhaps thought the ball would go away. In the first match when the shine was outside, he tried to step out and it did go the other way. So yeah, it was a big wicket. He is a very dangerous batter at that stage of the match. He takes his chances and plays with a lot of freedom,” he said after stumps on Day 3 to Jio Cinema experts Zaheer Khan and Kevin Pietersen.
Pietersen aptly sums up Stokes’ reaction
Bumrah was on a roll, absolute fire during his menacing spell on Day 2 en route to finishing with 6/45 – his third six-wicket-haul in Tests and best figures in India. Bumrah dismissed Ollie Pope for the fifth time and shot England out for 253, handing India a solid first-innings lead of 143, which later rose to 171 as India finished on 28/0 by the end of the second day.
Pietersen was in so much awe of Bumrah – who became the fastest Indian bowler to 150 Test wickets – that he summed up that reaction from Stokes in the best-way possible.
“He is a mighty fine bowler. What a privilege it is to watch him. He is just the master, isn’t he? If he is saying that he produced a Ben Stokes delivery which he shouldn’t have done, then how are you supposed to play it? You get some sort of an indication in his action load that it’s going to go this way or that way. It’s almost unplayable. You saw it there from Stokes’ reaction. It was like saying ‘I just can’t play this’,” said the former England captain.
