Ahmedabad, Mar 6 (PTI) Priyank Panchal vividly remembers the buzz around a teenage Jasprit Bumrah, who was feared for his sharp and mean bouncers during his school cricket days.
As the Indian team gears up for another momentous ICC summit clash at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Sunday, the former India A and Gujarat skipper Panchal took a trip down the memory lane to tell stories about the early days of India’s greatest ever fast bowler, who is the biggest cricketing icon from this part of India.
Panchal, a domestic run-machine in his own right, has 29 first-class centuries and was a part of India’s Test squad for the 2021-22 series in South Africa.
“I was a few years senior to Jassi (Bumrah) and by the time he made it to the Gujarat team, I was already playing Ranji Trophy. But as it happens about any talented kid, we heard that this teenager is making waves in school cricket ,” Panchal told PTI in an interaction.
“During those days, school tournaments were played on matting (artificial mat) wickets so the ball would travel quicker than natural turf pitches. But at school level, you don’t hear about 15-16-year olds scaring the daylights out of other boys of his age with consistent and accurate bouncers. He had an aura about him even before he made his Ranji debut,” Panchal fondly recalls.
But Panchal’s first proper interaction with Bumrah was when Gujarat went for a pre-season trip to Pune ahead of the Ranji Trophy season.
“Although there was an age-gap between me and him, he was one of the best roommates I had. He was a quiet boy, who just believes in sheer hard work and wouldn’t like to make a song and dance about it. Obviously, if he considers you a friend and opens up to you, he is like a house on fire and fun company.” Like the whole world, Panchal agrees that Bumrah is a “genius” but having seen an artist at work first hand and played hundreds of deliveries at training during early days, he would vouch about the kind of work Bumrah puts in his craft.
“When he started playing first-class cricket, with that action of his, he had a mean bouncer, an effective inswinger and the yorker was developing. At that point, he didn’t have an outswinger. That is one delivery that he learnt on the job. Hours of practice, fantastic understanding of technical aspects and fine-tuning it has now made him a master of outgoing delivery too.
“If you see, his outswing starts on leg-middle line and finishes on off-stump which makes it so difficult for the batter to negotiate,” Panchal explained. For Panchal, what separates Bumrah from others is his intensity, which is unmatched apart from his peerless game sense.
“If I talk about Test matches, the intensity while bowling the first over and may be the 16th over at the end of the day, there won’t be any sharp drop in pace. Yeh isliye ki Jassi kabhi bhi yeh soch ke cricket nahi khela ki “mujhko apni body bachani hai”. He has always pushed the limits of his body without caring that he can get seriously injured. For him, whether it is match or practice, it’s ‘all or nothing’.” In fact, Panchal has witnessed first hand how angry Bumrah could get if he was driven on the up even at the practice session.
“God forbid, if you a batter who has driven Jassi on the rise or he has bowled slightly fuller in the nets, be rest assured, the next ball could either be a chin music or a toe crusher,” he laughs, adding, “Often at the nets, we would jokingly tell him that go easy on certain batters, who aren’t comfortable against short ball and could get injured.” After facing him at the Ranji Trophy nets, Panchal understood how Bumrah has entered the different league when he faced him in the nets during India’s tour of South Africa back in 2021-22 where he was one of the reserve openers.
“By that time, he had became a complete bowler. His homework and reading of conditions was very different. At the Ranji level, most of the fast bowlers you face go a bit fuller in search of swing and do not hit the deck. At the international level, the key is to hit the deck and change lengths as per conditions,” Panchal stated.
He then cited an example of a Test match which India won at the Centurion and Bumrah got five wickets (2 in first and 3 in second).
“In the second innings, he bowled one over and hit the lengths that he had hit in the first. It took him six balls to understand that he needed to change the length and he did it promptly. Look at the semi-final at Wankhede yesterday. It was getting tricky and look at the lengths he bowled on a batting paradise.” Bumrah is 32 years old and still plays all three formats with 500 international wickets in his kitty.
Panchal wants Bumrah to continue playing for years.
“It is a pure joy watching him operate. I want him to play for at least eight more years across formats. You just don’t wish that he stops.” PTI KHS APS APS APS
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