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Jasprit Bumrah didn’t establish himself as the undisputed number one bowler in the world by mopping up tail-enders. He gets good players out: just look at his record against Joe Root.
Bumrah has got Root out 10 times in Test cricket, and I am sure India captain Shubman Gill would have wanted his premier wicket-taker to bowl more at England’s top run scorer during the afternoon session.
It wasn’t to be because Ollie Pope seemed to be stuck down Bumrah’s end, something Root wouldn’t have been overly upset about, but after tea, with Pope dismissed, Bumrah was straight back on to work over Harry Brook, the world’s best batter according to the official rankings updated earlier this week.
Like all champion bowlers - Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Jimmy Anderson readily come to mind - Bumrah provides control. Remarkably, he has never been taken for 100 runs in an innings.
But what they really give you, when you need a wicket, when you need to dismiss the most in-form player in the world, is something out of nothing.
That’s what Bumrah managed to produce on Thursday on a very turgid Lord's pitch.
Harry Brook was dismissed by a corking delivery from Jasprit Bumrah on day one at Lord's
Bumrah showed why he's the world's best bowler by dismissing the world's No 1 ranked batter
Like all champion bowlers, Bumrah gives control to the bowling attack - and that brings wickets
It has clearly been an India team plan, working Brook over with deliveries that nip back into him.
Think of the second Test at Edgbaston last week when Akash Deep got him out in both innings in that manner - bowled and LBW.
Brook himself knows this, hence he's getting right across, even outside the line of off-stump, to try to take the leg before dismissal out of the equation.
But what Bumrah did really well - on a ground where it's not easy to play the short ball because of the chronic lack of pace - was use his bouncer.
Think back to the bouncers that Australia employed against England in the Lord’s Ashes two years ago - it wasn't the pace that did for them, it the was lack of it.
Bumrah used a short delivery every over, keeping Brook back in his crease in the process.
When you're thinking about the potential of bouncers coming, you can’t convince yourself to get quite as far forward as you’d like as a batsman, and Bumrah preyed on this for the first part of his set-up.
For Brook’s dismissal, Bumrah banged one in then went fuller, bowling wobble seam - the process of the ball wobbling meaning it sometimes lands on the leather and goes on straight, and sometimes hits the edge of the seam, resulting in it changing direction off the pitch.
England finished the day on 251/4 with Joe Root (right) on 99 and Ben Stokes (left) on 39
There was little movement on offer on a turgid pitch, but Bumrah continued to look a threat
The first of his fuller deliveries was a little bit more cross seam than the one that took the wicket, jagging back far enough to clip the off-stump - it was a classic example of a bowler using a combination of short and full balls well.
There is very little movement on offer for the faster bowlers on this surface, edges aren't carrying, and yet Bumrah always looks a threat.
In the first over of his return to the series, he showed his class, swinging one ball past the outside edge of Zak Crawley’s bat and then having Ben Duckett nick short of the wicketkeeper with one that moved through the air the other way. When he swings the ball, he uses his wrist to get it going in either direction, with no clues.
India didn’t pick Bumrah to make sure he was fresh for this match, having recently come back from a back injury, but they will get to a stage - perhaps later in this series - where you just play him unless he says: ‘I am not fit.’
If for example, he plays at Old Trafford, because there might be some reverse swing and it can be a bouncy pitch, I wouldn’t then rule him out of featuring at the Oval too.
If it’s 2-2 going into the final match of the series, you can’t be so welded to your pre-plan that you rule out the strike bowler who might win you a game on his own.
That’s for another day. On Thursday, it was a brilliant win in the battle of best v best with Brook.
