There is always noise at a cricket ground. Horns blaring. Drums beating. The occasional flirting. " Dus rupaye ki Pepsi! Kohli bhai sexy !" A lot of this is just the fans having fun. Often enough, it has no connection to what's going on in the middle.
And then he gets the ball.
All of a sudden there is a hush around Green Park. They wait for him to reach the top of his mark. Tap, tap, tap comes the sound of the bat hitting the ground as Mehidy Hasan Miraz takes strike. Twenty-thousand pairs of eyes turn towards Jasprit Bumrah as he starts his run-up. The silence is about to shatter. And this time it's not just noise. It's music.
"Whoooooohhhhhhhh" goes the crowd as Bumrah begins to accelerate. "Oooooooohhhhhh" they sigh as Mehidy reacts well and dabs the ball to point. They don't need distractions to keep themselves occupied now. Gautam Gambhir is right. This guy has become a cultural phenomenon.
Five weeks ago , Bumrah was at Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology in Chennai for freshers day and they cooked for him. His reveal on stage was pretty much on par with anything the movies do with mass heroes. He was sat on a throne. It faced the wrong way. The whole place went dark. The number 93 started flashing. The whole place started to shake. The throne spun, in slow motion, and there he was, sat like a king. A sheepish one.
It is because of people like Bumrah that India could believe that a result was possible in Kanpur. At the start of the fourth day, the first innings was still going on. They'd laid plans in place to push the game forward but there were no guarantees that it would all work out. Rohit Sharma, at the post-match presentation, said they were prepared to be 200 all out. They weren't, of course. They scored 285 and declared in 34.4 overs. Then they picked up two second innings wickets before stumps, to add to the seven from earlier in the day. India played the fourth day full throttle. The fifth - towards the end especially - became about soaking in all that they had managed to do.
R Ashwin left his post at mid-on to come over and put his arm around Bumrah as he returns to his mark. It looks like a very one-sided exchange. In order to make it end, Bumrah brings both his hands up, palms pressed to each other rather like how people say hello or goodbye. Ashwin didn't listen. He continued to hype his bowling partner. From mid-off, Axar Patel chimed in as well. Both of them clapped Bumrah on right through the 37th over when it was becoming very clear that the improbable result that India had set their sights on was well within reach.
"Whoooooohhhhhhhh" goes the crowd as Bumrah begins to accelerate again. Mehidy is unable to deal with this one and ends up caught behind. Bumrah tests the newcomer Taijul Islam with a couple of short ones and sneaks a full one in between and then collects his cap to walk back to his fielding position. As he looks up, he sees Ashwin slow-clapping him. He offers him a salute in return. This was a special day for India. They were doing special things. The extent to which they had beat the odds made it all the more fun for them. They seemed joyous. Mischievous.
Rishabh Pant spent the final few seconds of the drinks break hanging around by the stumps, fiddling with something. A little red light flashed. He was fiddling with the bails. He had flipped them to see if that might change India's luck. The first hour of play had only offered one wicket. The next one yielded seven. Perhaps it was the bails that did it. Or perhaps it had something to do with Ravindra Jadeja 's introduction to the attack.
He was the last bowler that India turned to in every innings of this series. Bangladesh being a left-hander heavy side might have had something to do that with. Jadeja took one of them out with his second ball. It broke a period of play where Bangladesh made 55 runs in 13.4 overs and heralded one where Bangladesh lost seven wickets for 55 runs. India were doing so many amazing things in this game. Scoring at almost 9 runs an over. Taking a first-innings lead in three hours of batting. Breaking the taboo of bowler vs batter match-ups. Jadeja went on to dismiss another left-hander.
Shakib Al Hasan was tamely out, caught and bowled. But see, that ball, it had all the hallmarks that makes it hard to face Jadeja, no matter your orientation. Sure, you're able to hit with the turn if you're left-handed, but he complicates that by bowling over the wicket. He creates an angle that is going against you. Also here, he managed to get the ball to dip on Shakib so all of a sudden there's distance between a bat that was pushing forward to milk a single to long-on and the ball. That's where all the magic happened. The dip allowed for the grip that turned a shot without no risk into one that will now attract ridicule. Shakib was left in utter disbelief at what he had done; or maybe what he had been made to do. The rest of Kanpur though erupted. Horns blaring. Drums beating.
A Test match win after only 52 overs of batting and 121.2 overs of bowling. That's something to savour and savour they did.
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