Having “clear plans” helps Jasprit Bumrah in death overs

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Jasprit Bumrah has credited the clarity of thought while bowling in the death overs as the main reason for his success. The Mumbai Indians pacer has also cited that the ability to stay in the present and not being too worried about what is in the store has helped him learn a lot and grow.

Bumrah’s spell of 4-0-15-3 turned the game on its head against Kings XI Punjab on Wednesday as Mumbai secured a three-run win to stay alive in the race for the playoffs. Rohit Sharma saved Bumrah's two overs for the last five of the innings and the latter stood tall to the faith by first dismissing the well-set Aaron Finch to wrest the advantage back in Mumbai’s favour. But when Ben Cutting was hit for 15 runs in an over, the equation came down to 23 off 12 balls and Bumrah was brought on to bowl in the 19th over, and he got the better of KL Rahul on 94 when the former RCB man had almost seen Punjab through. Explaining what his thought process during such crucial phases in the game was, Bumrah credited his clear mind for the same.

“In three hours, I believe a player doesn’t become bad. I always feel that you have done it before so you can do it again. You don’t think about opinions or what is going on outside. I always look to focus, what is there right now. In this game, I was backing my plans still and had the belief that I can bowl a good over. Always you want to bowl a good over but some days it doesn’t go your way, because, at the position where I bowl, it is very difficult, especially at this ground with the dew going around, it is always difficult,” Bumrah was quoted as saying by PTI.

“We know that he’s (Rahul) been batting really well, from the first game he has batted really well so, in the bowler’s meeting, we usually talk about every player. We knew dew would come in the second innings so I had a chat with Shane Bond and Malinga. To have the clear plans, whenever you are bowling is very important so I was focusing on that.

”On a good day, when you have a clear plan, you are able to execute whatever you wanted to, today it worked for me, some days it doesn’t work. So I don’t look at what has happened before, what will happen in the future. My focus is always to have a clear plan and I back my plan and myself, whenever I am bowling, whichever situation I am bowling in. Today was a good day so it went well.”

One of the interesting aspects of Bumrah’s bowling yesterday was the way he planned each and every batsman. Yesterday, while he bowled shorter lengths to Aaron Finch and Marcus Stoinis, he went a touch fuller to KL Rahul. On being asked about that, he revealed that he wanted to build more pressure rather than going all-out for a dismissal. 

“When we got two wickets, I wanted to build pressure. I wanted to give as many as more runs that I could give to Mitch (McClenaghan) in the last over so that is why I went full.”

While rest floundered to fire in unison in the Punjab line-up, Andrew Tye has been a knight in the shining armour for the Mohali-based franchise and kept his brilliant form going to snap up four for 16 to keep Mumbai in check. When quizzed, if he took a leaf out of Tye’s plan yesterday, Bumrah said that he stuck to his own process. 

“He’s a different bowler from me, he bowls a lot of knuckle balls and he has a different pace from me. I am a different kind of bowler. I didn’t pick up a lot from his bowling, I was just focusing on my plans, what I could do according to my bowling on this wicket, so that was it.”

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