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31-year-old Jasprit Bumrah played 13 Tests and 8 T20Is for India in 2024 and dismissed 71 and 15 batters, respectively.
Jasprit Bumrah dismissed 71 batters in 13 Tests for India in 2024. (Picture Credit: AP)
Jasprit Bumrah suffered a back injury during the India-England ODI series in July 2022, which ruled him out of action for a couple of months. He missed the Asia Cup during that period and made a comeback for India in September during the three-match T20I series against Australia at home. He featured in the second and third T20I before being ruled out of action again due to a back injury. He missed the T20 World Cup in Australia due to that, in addition to the 2023 edition of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, IPL 2023, and the World Test Championship (WTC) 2023 final against Australia at Lord’s. There were a lot of question marks over Bumrah, and many experts and greats of the game felt that the right-arm fast bowler from Ahmedabad is over. He won’t be able to return to the field and have the same kind of impact again. The cricketer, who made his international debut as a 22-year-old in January 2016 against Australia at Sydney Cricket Ground, was heavily trolled on social media platforms by fans, and the trend of ‘Sharam karle Bumrah’ was so common at that time.
But Bumrah remained unfazed by all that and instead focused on recovering completely before making a comeback. And man! What a comeback he has made since his return to competitive cricket in August 2023.
Comeback on August 18, 2023
Bumrah returned to the international scene once again after almost 11 months, and his first assignment was a three-match T20I series in Ireland for which he was appointed as India’s captain as well. Bumrah picked up two wickets each in the first two matches and led India to a 2-0 series win.
He then played for the Rohit Sharma-led side in the Asia Cup, three-match ODI series against Australia, and the ODI World Cup 2023 and finished with 4, 6, and 20 wickets, respectively. He was one of India’s top performers in the men’s 50-over megaevent and played a big role in the team’s unbeaten run to the final. In the summit clash against Australia at Narendra Modi Stadium on November 19, 2023, he picked up two wickets for 43 runs in nine overs but failed to help India lift the title for the third time in history.
Bumrah, who is arguably India’s best fast bowler of all time, made a successful comeback in 2023, but it was just the trailer because what he managed to do in 2024 was beyond imagination.
Unreal numbers
The fast bowler, who only played one Test in 2023, which was also in the last week of the year, played 13 Test matches in 2024 and dismissed 71 batters with an average of 14.92. No bowler ever in the 147-year-old history of Test cricket has managed to take more than 70 Test wickets in a calendar year with an average less than that of Bumrah’s.
He was outstanding for India, not just in India, where he played 8 Tests, but also in South Africa and Australia.
In his first Test of 2024, which was played at Newlands in Cape Town, Bumrah picked up two wickets in the first innings and six in the second to seal India’s win by 7 wickets inside two days. For his brilliant performance with the ball (12 wickets in two Tests), Bumrah won the Player of the Series award in South Africa.
He then played four of five Tests at home against England and finished the series with 19 wickets. He dismissed six batters (2/28 and 4/41) in the series opener, which India lost by 28 runs in Hyderabad, and picked up nine wickets (6/45 and 3/46) in the second match at Visakhapatnam to help India level the series.
No. 1 in all three formats
For his top bowling show in Vizag, Bumrah won Player of the Match award, and the nine-wicket show also helped him achieve No. 1 Test ranking for the first time in his career. By reaching the top of the ICC Test bowler’s ranking, Bumrah created history as he became the first bowler and overall fourth cricketer in the world to achieve the No. 1 position in ICC rankings in all three formats of the game.
20 wickets for MI
After helping India win a home series with a scoreline of 4-1, Bumrah participated in the IPL 2024 for the Mumbai Indians and picked up 20 wickets in 13 matches to finish as the third leading wicket-taker.
His best performance for the Hardik Pandya-led side was in the home match against Royal Challengers Bengaluru, where, in his quota of four overs, he managed to take 5 wickets for 21 runs.
But despite Bumrah’s efforts, MI finished at the bottom of the IPL 2024 points table.
T20 World Cup 2024
Bumrah led India’s pace attack in the T20 World Cup 2024 and accounted for the dismissal of 15 batters in eight matches. He kicked off the tournament with figures of 2/6 in three overs against Ireland and won the Player of the Match award.
India’s second match was against Pakistan in New York on June 9, and in that, the Rohit Sharma-led side could only manage to score 119 runs in 20 overs. But it also proved too much for the archrivals. Thanks to Bumrah’s figures of 3 for 14 in four overs, India successfully defended the target and won the match by six runs. Bumrah dismissed Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan, and Iftikhar Ahmed to win the second POTM award in a row.
In the next five matches, Bumrah registered figures of 0/25 vs USA, 3/7 vs Afghanistan, 2/13 vs Bangladesh, 1/29 vs Australia, and 2/12 vs England (semifinal).
The final of the T20 World Cup 2024 was played between India and South Africa in Barbados on June 29, and in that high-voltage match, Bumrah picked up 2 wickets for 18 runs in four overs. After Virat Kohli’s 76-run knock from 59 balls helped India post a total of 176 runs, Bumrah dismissed Reeza Hendricks on the third ball of his first and South Africa’s second over of the run chase to get India off to a flying start. He came to bowl his second spell of the match when South Africa was just 30 runs short of the target from 30 balls and led India’s fightback.
He conceded only four runs in his third over to bring down the equation to 26 from 24 balls, and then in his final over of the match, Bumrah conceded only two runs in addition to taking one wicket to leave South Africa in need of 20 runs from 12 balls.
For his remarkable contribution in India’s T20 World Cup title win, Bumrah won the Player of the Tournament award.
During India’s T20 World Cup 2024 title win celebration in Mumbai on July 4, former India captain and legendary batter Virat Kohli described Bumrah as a “national treasure” and the “eighth wonder of the world.”
“We also felt at one point it was going to slip away again, but what happened in those last five overs was truly, truly special. You know what I’d like everyone to do is applaud a guy who brought us back into games again and again and again in this tournament. What he did in those last five overs, bowling two out of the last five overs, was phenomenal. A huge round of applause for Jasprit Bumrah, please. We are lucky that he plays for us. We want him to continue playing for India as long as he can. I’ll sign the petition for Jasprit Bumrah to be the eighth wonder of the world right now. He is a once-in-a-generation bowler,” Kohli had said.
Home series vs B’desh and NZ
After enjoying a couple of months’ break, Bumrah made a comeback during a two-match Test series against Bangladesh and then also played in the first two matches of the home series against New Zealand. He finished the Bangladesh series with 11 wickets (5+6) and the New Zealand series with three wickets.
Bumrah vs Australia
Bumrah took his game to an altogether next level in the last couple of months of 2024, and his best performances of the year came during the 2024-25 edition of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, which kicked off on November 22 in Perth.
In the series opener, which India played under Bumrah’s leadership, the right-arm fast bowler dismissed five Aussie batters in the first innings to help India take a 46-run lead despite only scoring 150 runs and got rid of three more batters in the second to seal India’s win by 295 runs.
In the second Test, which was played with a pink ball at Adelaide Oval, Bumrah picked up four wickets and managed to get rid of nine Aussie batters, each in the third and fourth Tests played at The Gabba and Melbourne Cricket Ground.
He finished the Brisbane Test with figures of 6/76 and 3/18 and the MCG Test with 4/99 and 5/57. During the Boxing Day Test at MCG, Bumrah became India’s most successful Test bowler in SENA countries and also the first bowler in the world to take 200 or more Test wickets with an average of less than 20.
Overall Bumrah has 30 wickets to his name in four Tests played so far in the 2024-25 edition of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. If he manages to take three more wickets in the final Test, which will be played from January 3-7, 2025, at Sydney Cricket Ground, Bumrah will break Harbhajan Singh’s record of taking the most wickets in a Test series between India and Australia, and if Bumrah accounts for the dismissal of at least six batters in Sydney, then he will break the all-time record of taking the most wickets in a Test series for India.
Bumrah is finishing the year 2024 with 71 wickets to his name in 13 Tests and, overall, 86 wickets in 21 matches, which is the most by any bowler in Tests as well as in international cricket in 2024, and on December 30, he was also nominated for the ICC Cricketer of the Year and ICC Test Cricketer of the Year awards, which arguably no one deserves more than him.
