World Cup: How India’s formidable pace trio clinched electric win against Lanka

Except for a brief while during Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket, West Indies’ fast bowlers terrorised the cricket world for a decade and a half from the mid-1970s. They unleashed Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner and the irrepressible Malcolm Marshall on initially unsuspecting and increasingly intimidated batting groups, stacking up Test wins for fun and building an aura of invincibility that gradually started to fade when their seemingly endless assembly line of top-quality quicks began to dry up.

India’s fast bowling pack

Other teams have since thrown up fast-bowling units that have hunted as a pack – Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Brett Lee for Australia; Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Shoaib Akhtar for Pakistan; Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock, Lance Klusener and Brian McMillan for South Africa; Tim Southee and Trent Boult for New Zealand; James Anderson and Stuart Broad for England. India now have a triumvirate as good as any in world cricket, and they are making waves in One-Day Internationals, where the dice is heavily loaded in favour of the batsmen.

The forced induction into the playing XI for the last three games of their World Cup campaign of Mohammed Shami has lifted the stature, quality and potential for damage of the Indian fast-bowling group by several notches. For the first few games, when India fielded four seamers, the new-ball pair of Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj was complemented by Hardik Pandya and Shardul Thakur, the latter being paraded as an all-rounder of sorts because he can be handy with the bat and therefore became a crucial fit at No. 8.

Pandya’s ankle injury sustained against Bangladesh in Pune meant India had to rejig their options. Such is Pandya’s pre-eminence as an all-rounder that India had to bring in two specialists to replace him – Suryakumar Yadav with the bat and Shami with the ball. Out went Thakur in the interest of balance and team dynamics, the same two traits that facilitated his inclusion in the first place. India have been an entirely different beast since then.

The dreaded trio

Between them, Bumrah, Shami and Siraj have picked up 38 wickets. Bumrah has garnered 15 wickets with the ridiculous economy (in seven matches and 58.5 overs) of 3.72 runs per over. Shami’s 14 scalps (in three outings) have come at an average of 6.71 and a strike-rate of 9.42, other-worldly numbers in a tournament that has seen several scores in excess of 300. Siraj hasn’t been the same destructive force, but he seems to be coming into his own, if his three for 16 against Sri Lanka in Mumbai on Thursday (November 2) night is anything to go by.

India’s pacers have been very good in the afternoon – the highest they had conceded in the first five matches was New Zealand’s 273 in Dharamsala – but they have been exceptional in the night, under artificial lights which, for some as-yet-unexplained reason, allow the white new ball to have a life of its own. Both against England in Lucknow and Sri Lanka, when India have defended targets with a great degree of comfort, the three quicks have made life miserable for the batsmen with their pace, prodigious seam movement and swing, and the disconcerting lift they have been able to generate, both on a sluggish track in Lucknow and on a batting beauty at the Wankhede.

Every ball an opportunity

Every ball has been an event, pregnant with possibilities. The collective roar of anticipation that has marked their approach to the bowling crease has been met by, and overmatched, by the roar of unabashed approval at the fall of a wicket. Stumps have been rearranged, bails shattered, egos bruised; if Bumrah don’t get you, Shami will. And if Shami don’t get you, Siraj will. We get the point, right?

England, embattled England, beleaguered England, defending champions England, must have believed they were on to a good thing when they kept India’s formidable batting down to 229 for nine. Inside 10 overs, their chase was in ruins, Dawid Malan, Joe Root, a miserable Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow all fired out mercilessly. You could sense the helplessness of each incoming batsman, the sense of hopelessness of their scribes in the press box. Forget 230, England didn’t even get to 130. Siraj went wicketless, but Bumrah and Shami combined for five for 54 from 13.1 breathless overs. Oh what fun it was. This, after Shami had celebrated his belated World Cup debut of this edition with five for 54 in Dharamsala against New Zealand, keeping a potential 310-plus tally to 273.

Siraj must have been chomping at the bit, wondering where his wicket-taking capabilities had gone. But the sight of his favourite opponents stoked his competitive juices on Thursday. In January in Thiruvananthapuram, he had taken four for 32 to send the Lankans crashing to 73 all out and defeat by 317 runs, the largest margin in ODI history. In September in Colombo, in the final of the Asia Cup, his six for 21 triggered a cataclysmic collapse, the hosts shot out for 50 in 15.1 overs. How could one not be lifted by these numbers?

Match against Lanka

And so on Thursday, in his first seven deliveries, Siraj picked up three wickets. Without conceding a run. Without looking like conceding a run. He was fast, he was furious, he was snarling and growling and snapping and frothing, the bit between his teeth. Bumrah was in the middle of a terrific spell at the other end but it was Siraj who was the cynosure, the spring in his step and the additional yard of pace lethal weapons so far as the transfixed Sri Lankans were concerned.

India had amassed 357 in the afternoon, on the back of grand fifties from Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli and Shreyas Iyer, yet no one was talking about it. When has that ever happened? In India, as batting-loving a country as there ever is? This evening was about Bumrah, the king of swing. About Shami, the master of seam and wrist. And Siraj, ruled by his heart and with the scrambled seam as his ally. This was about running like the wind and bowling even faster. With skill. With deception and menace. With destruction in mind. With mayhem as the intent. And with carnage as the outcome. It was electric stuff, Sri Lanka blown away for 55. Fifty-five. And even that came through a lot of fortune and fuss.

This awesome trio, what more does it have in store? Now, doesn’t that excite you?