The Bumrah slower ball that bent time

Cricket trading cards were so much fun. They were the best way to pass the time on the bus to school. Especially if you had Brian Lara. All you had to do was go "highest score". There's another cheat code cricketer doing the rounds now. And his powers, it seems, only keep growing.

Jasprit Bumrah doesn't go searching for wickets but on Saturday he found one that will be talked about for years and years.

It was an offcutter. But also more. In the same way that the Mona Lisa is a painting but also more.

Bumrah pretty much bent time with that ball. Or at least the batter's perspective of it. And this was Mohammad Rizwan at the crease. Well set. Fresh off a match-winning century that had shepherded the highest-ever chase in the men's ODI World Cup.

It needed something special to dislodge him. And Bumrah spent the whole over cooking it up. He kept his pace up for the first five balls. He also targeted a line just outside off stump. Rizwan pushes with hard hands. That creates a gap between bat and pad. Bumrah spent four balls prising that tiiiiny gap open and with the fifth he burst right through.

It was an offcutter. But there was no change in arm speed. That's what does batters in. The run-up is the same. The gather is the same. The hyper-extension of the elbow is the same. The snap of the wrist...

That's where the genius lies. For the seam-up balls, Bumrah snaps it straight down. For this variation, he snaps it sideways.

So what happens is, through the air, the ball is really, really quick. But then when it hits the pitch, because of the revs imparted, it digs in and it slows down and that slowing down is so disorienting.

Rizwan was into the shot so early and he was so utterly beaten because, at first, the ball looked like it was pace on, then it pitched and became something entirely different.

And that is still only part of the story.

The other bit is it moved so far. It was at least a set of stumps outside off when it pitched. To cut in from there and hit the target, Muthiah Muralidaran would've been pleased with that. Maybe Bumrah doesn't have a fast bowler's slower ball. He just has a 122 kph offbreak. Confirmation of that arrived in the post-match presentation.

"We were bowling in the middle wickets [during practice in Ahmedabad] and I saw Jaddu's [Ravindra Jadeja] ball was turning a little bit but there was not consistent turn. And I count my slower ball as a spinner's slower ball," Bumrah said while picking up the Player of the Match award. "So I thought it could be a good option maybe to make run-scoring a little more difficult, use the different deliveries that I had and it gripped. So you know, one of those days."

It's not the first time he's used a little change of pace to create chaos. In 2018, he had Shaun Marsh lbw with one that dipped from out of nowhere. That janky wrist of his had the batter playing two different shots by the time the ball arrived and he couldn't make contact with either of them. Bumrah bent space with that slower ball. One minute it was above Marsh's eyeline, tempting him to think he had an easy put-away, the next it was crashing into his ankles. Then in 2021, his offcutter trapped Ollie Robinson lbw… from around the wicket. That's how much it breaks off the pitch - and this was at Lord's, nowhere near the bone-dry conditions of the subcontinent.

He is already difficult to pick up with that bowling action. He is adept at straightening the ball off the seam, which is all the more dangerous because of the angle he generates into the right-hander - Shadab Khan got bowled on the outside edge playing for that angle. That was reverse-swing and it was glorious too. But to do what he does with his variations, with what is essentially his plan B, that is the kind of skill that suspends belief.

Bumrah has been the toughest challenge to face at this World Cup. He has produced 47 false shots in 162 deliveries. That's one better than anybody else has managed in this tournament. Today, he had Rizwan moving in fast forward while everything else happened in slow motion. It was preposterous.