'Test cricket the utmost format for me': Jasprit Bumrah ahead of India-England series

Jasprit Bumrah may be proficient and lethal in all three formats of the game but believes “Test cricket is king.” Bumrah is the most-experienced seamer in the Indian squad for England Test series that gets underway on 25 January. Despite having played 32 Test matches and picking up 140 wickets, Bumrah has played just four fixtures at home. “I am of that generation where Test cricket is king,” Bumrah told The Guardian. “I will always judge myself on it. Yes, I started with IPL, but I learned to bowl through first-class cricket; that’s where I developed my skill, the art of taking wickets. In Test cricket you have to get the batsman out and that challenges you as a bowler.” The five-match Test series versus England will be Bumrah’s second since comeback from a stress fracture that kept him out for over a year. In the first, played in South Africa, he took 12 wickets, including a match-winning 6/61, that helped India win the Cape Town Test and level the series 1-1. As Indian cricket team move focus to home pitches, the surface is expected to favour the spinners. The last time England tour India (in 2021), Bumrah played just two of the four matches and bowled just 48 overs. It remains to be seen how involved he will be this time around. “T20s, ODIs, some days you might send down five slower balls and get five guys out, when in a Test match they wouldn’t have taken one,” he explained. “There is no luck in Test cricket, the better team wins, you cannot take 20 wickets through luck. I was never happy with just white-ball cricket and Test cricket is still the utmost format for me.” The last time India played England, in July 2022, Bumrah held the captaincy duties. India failed to defend 378 runs with Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root scoring hundreds in an unbroken 269-run stand to seal victory that denied the visitors a first Test series win in England since 2007. The new approach, labelled ‘Bazball’, will be a challenge for the both teams alike. On the attacking brand of cricket, Bumrah said, “I don’t really relate to the term Bazball. But they are playing successful cricket and the aggressive route of taking the opposition on, showing the world there’s another way to play Test cricket.” “As a bowler, what I think is that it keeps me in play. And if they’re going for it, playing so fast, they won’t tire me out, I could get heaps [of wickets]. I always think about how I can use things to my advantage. Kudos to them but, as a bowler, you’re in the game.” Bumrah, one of the most lethal bowlers in the world with pinpoint accuracy on yorkers, revealed the story behind the delivery - and how it was born. “Summers in India can be really hot in the afternoon and parents don’t let kids out. I was a hyperactive kid, lots of energy, but my mother would sleep in the afternoon. “Then I found that if I bowled a ball into the skirting board, it didn’t make a sound. So I could bowl without disturbing her, no issues. I did not imagine at the time it would develop into a yorker, I really didn’t know what one was.” The 30-year-old carried that precision from home cricket into tape-ball cricket with breaking the stumps his “only aim.” It then reached Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA) setup before eventually being observed by former India coach John Wright. “I was just a happy accident,” says Bumrah in the knowledge that Wright was in Gujarat to watch Axar Patel play.