From yorkers to bouncers and everything inbetween, Jasprit Bumrah has got it all

You're writing about Jasprit Bumrah's extraordinary IPL season. You type 'prithvi shaw jasprit bumrah' in the search bar, looking for this video from this game, but you end up, instead, at this video from two years ago, from this game.

Who else but Bumrah could have dismissed the same batter with two entirely different yet equally unplayable deliveries?

You remember the yorker from this season, of course, made memorable by Shaw's lifted back leg. A nifty bit of footwork out of the Mohammad Azharuddin/Kevin Pietersen playbook, but where those two adopted the flamingo pose to whip the ball through midwicket, Shaw did it purely in self-preservation.

The 2022 ball was just as devastating, an offcutter-bouncer that lost none of its pace for being delivered like an offcutter, jagging in wildly off the pitch to follow Shaw's attempt to… to do what, exactly? Here again, the batter's actions were almost all reaction, almost entirely geared towards self-preservation, except on this occasion he was protecting his head rather than his foot.

Bumrah can make you look helpless from either end of the length spectrum and nearly every point in between.

Much of this helplessness stems from how little time Bumrah gives batters to line him up. His release point, as you already probably know, is much further ahead of the crease than it is for most fast bowlers, so he's effectively bowling on a shortened pitch. But it isn't just that. When you're watching his release from front-on, from the batter's point of view, he gives you far less of a clue than most bowlers as to what length he's about to bowl.

An X (formerly Twitter) analyst, who doesn't want to be identified here, has dipped into ball-tracking data and created an enlightening graph that plots bowlers' average release heights for different lengths, and it's notable how tight Bumrah's cluster is, especially compared to those of taller bowlers.

Unless he's delivering high-effort bouncers halfway down the pitch, for which his release is notably later and lower, it would take a batter with an incredibly good eye to differentiate just from release height (they have other cues to help them, of course) what length Bumrah is bowling. For pretty much any length from 2m to 8m from the stumps, his release height is virtually the same. That range encompasses everything from yorkers to hard-length balls.

And if it isn't enough that Bumrah's action gives you precious little clue of where he's going to land the ball, he can make it confound you in every way imaginable.

He can beat you in the air like a spinner, and make you misjudge lengths fatally. You probably already know about the lift Bumrah can generate. He puts so much backspin on his on-pace deliveries that the ball defies gravity for a fraction of a second and comes to earth later, and fuller, than the batter is conditioned to expect.

Bumrah's yorker to Wriddhiman Saha from Mumbai Indians' first game of the season demonstrated this beautifully. Saha was shaping to drive through the covers, his mind probably registering a half-volley or something near that length when he saw the ball leave Bumrah's hand, little realising how much of a misjudgment he was making. It was a misjudgment of length, yes, and because of Bumrah's exaggerated inward angle it was also a misjudgment of line. The ball didn't just york Saha but beat his inside edge as well.

But as exaggerated as that angle is, it doesn't stop him from beating the other edge when he wants to. Like the Saha yorker, the Rilee Rossouw yorker from Mumbai's game against Punjab Kings was also delivered with the new ball, and also from over the wicket, but on this occasion Bumrah swung it so much that the ball defied that angle, reversing course late in its path across the left-hand batter to turn the stumps into a gory spatter.

And if he generates significant lift while delivering full-tilt, he can do the opposite too, and get the ball to dip alarmingly, thanks to the vicious overspin he puts on his slower offcutter. After yorking Saha in that Gujarat Titans game, Bumrah dismissed David Miller with one such delivery. Like Saha, Miller was shaping to drive a half-volleyish length through the covers; his front-foot stride was short enough to be non-existent. The ball, though, wasn't just slower but also significantly shorter than the one Miller initially seemed to think he was playing; he ended up checking his shot, hitting underneath the ball, and spooning it to the backtracking mid-off fielder.

These deliveries represent only a fraction of Bumrah's full range, but the thing that moves him into genius territory isn't the range as much as his awareness of when and how to use it. Despite having every toy a bowler could ask for, he's far from over-eager to show off his collection. If he bowls on a pitch with a bit of seam movement, he'll bowl good lengths all day and extract all the help he can. If his slower ball is gripping and stopping, he'll run in and bowl those all day. Why risk the margin for error of the more spectacular option?

But then again, the mechanics of Bumrah's bowling give him wider margins for error than most other bowlers. Since the start of the 2020 season, only T Natarajan (165) and Harshal Patel (133) have bowled more full-tosses than Bumrah (125) in the IPL. If you attempt a lot of yorkers, you'll inevitably bowl a lot of full-tosses. But where other bowlers pay a heavy price for missing their length by a few inches, Bumrah doesn't, and perhaps this has something to do with the lift he generates, and how much harder his full-tosses hit the bat as a result. Bumrah's full-toss economy rate in this period is 7.87, which is nearly two runs an over better than Mohammed Siraj's 9.62. No other bowler who has sent down at least 40 full tosses in this time has gone at less than 10 an over while bowling this length.

Because Bumrah can do so many things with the ball, and because he knows when to do what thing, and against which batter, and because even his errors are hard to punish, he can bowl in any phase of a T20 innings. With a cut-off of 30 balls bowled in that phase, he's the most economical fast bowler of IPL 2024 in the powerplay (5.16) and the death (7.20), and he sits at No. 3 (7.00) in the middle overs, behind Mayank Yadav and Matheesha Pathirana.

Those are ridiculous numbers, and he's achieved them while bowling for a Mumbai Indians team that has made an ordinary start to the season, losing five of their eight games so far. Imagine how much worse off they'd be without Bumrah. Or, and this is a truly scary thought, where they'd be with one more Bumrah.

There is and has been, however, only one Bumrah. He does extraordinary things so routinely that they've almost lost their ability to blow your mind. Then he runs up and bowls his next highlights-reel ball, making you marvel at him afresh.