Rohit Sharma’s century was great but Jasprit Bumrah was the real man of the match

The official match records for the third and final One Day International between India and New Zealand in Kanpur will show that Rohit Sharma was declared the player of the match for his majestic 147 that gave the men in blue their seventh consecutive bilateral ODI series win. It’s not a surprise – when an innings like that ends up on the winning side, the batsman usually walks away with the award at the end. That’s just how cricket has always functioned.

But on Sunday, the man who made sure Virat Kohli was the winning captain in a brilliantly contested series was Jasprit Bumrah. With his 50th, 51st and 52nd ODI wickets, Bumrah showed once again why he’s rated as one of the best limited overs bowler going around.

The challenge for Bumrah against a spirited Black Caps line-up was a little different than usual at Green Park. The labour, more often than not, has been shared with the new ball and old for Bumrah. Bhuvneshwar Kumar, in fact, has been the spearhead for Kohli. But the story in Kanpur was different.

When Bumrah’s first four overs went for 12 runs and the wicket of Martin Guptill, Kumar’s first five overs went for 51. Nothing was working for the man who was the best bowler in the previous match in Pune and Bumrah was keeping the Black Caps in check single-handedly in the first powerplay.

It didn’t seem like a clever ploy by Kohli then, but giving Bumrah just four overs in the beginning did prove crucial at the end. In a chase of 338 on a flat pitch that was getting easier to bat on under the lights and with the dew settling, it was always likely that New Zealand will take the match down to the wire. And with Bhuvneshwar struggling, Kohli wanted as many overs from Bumrah as it was possible at the death.

And boy, did he deliver for his captain.

The equation read 90 runs off 60 balls for New Zealand. With Ross Taylor and Tom Latham at the crease, they were the favourites. The only way India could make a comeback into the game at that point was with a wicket.

And Bumrah delivered with the very first ball of the 41st. A brilliant off-cutter that was released with so many revolutions on the ball that it would have made Ravichandran Ashwin proud, hit the good length outside off stump and bounced a few inches extra, catching Taylor by surprise. He was looking to play a defensive stroke – take a look at the replay and you can see Taylor’s eyes still pointing towards the pitch when the ball hit his bat, a clear indication that he wasn’t even looking for a run off that ball. As it turned out, the bounce did him in, and the edge was taken by Kedar Jadhav at point.

The equation then read 50 off 30 balls when Bumrah came back for his final spell. And against expectations, Bumrah bowled an over in which he conceded 16 to make the equation 35 off 24 balls. It seemed as if that was the over the match decisively swung in New Zealand’s over. But the decisive over would, in fact, come a few minutes later when Bumrah yorked and pace-changed his way to conceding just five runs in the 47th, including the (quite hilarious) run out of Tom Latham.

Dot balls

As incredible as Bumrah’s 3-47 in 10 overs, in a match where 668 runs were scored, the number that stands out is the dot balls he bowled – 32 in all. Five off those came in his last 12 balls. The labour was shared at the death with Kumar bouncing back from a dreadful first eight overs, to bowl a brilliant 46th where he conceded just five and bowled a peach of a yorker to Henry Nicholls. But it was Bumrah who still shouldered the bulk of the responsibility and came out in flying colours.

How is he able to deliver at the death with this consistency?

“I tried to stay calm. If you try to complicate, then a lot of things happen. I just stayed calm, and my job was to execute the plans,” he said after the match. “It was difficult to bowl because batting got easier thanks to the dew. I don’t think much about the expectations on me before bowling the final overs. I was just focusing, ball-by-ball and kept expectations of people away from my mind. I try to look at the batsman till the end, but decide what delivery to bowl just before the release.”

And it is this clarity of thought that has made Bumrah a weapon Indian cricket was desperately looking for a few years back – a fast bowler who can deliver with incredible consistency at the back end of innings. While Rohit and Kohli set up the win with their 230-run stand, the man who won the match and series for India, yet again, was Bumrah.