When accuracy, relentlessness script symphony

Each time Jasprit Bumrah bowls, he forces everyone watching to examine the preconceptions of the prototypical fast bowler.

- Ashish Magotra

MELBOURNE: His run up is funny, the action — at first glance — isn’t repeatable, he isn’t exactly a physical specimen either but somehow, with the ball, he takes logic, the pitch and even the batters out of the equation.

We’ve seen him do this all series. He runs in, the crowd roars and the Aussies quake in their boots. But it never gets old. It never will. It never can. On Sunday, he cast a spell over the Melbourne Cricket Ground once again.

We thought the first spell was good. Everything in the channel. Everything in place. Everything challenging the batter. How Australia didn’t lose wickets was a mystery because Usman Khawaja and Sam Konstas played and missed more than they actually put bat on ball.

Konstas, for one, put the ramps and scoops away. He looked shaky; he looked like a player feeling every ounce of the pressure the world’s best fast bowler was piling on him. The 19-year-old backs himself, but this was a Bumrah still hurting from the first spell (6-2-38-0) in the first innings.

After torturing the teenager for a while, he got one to come back in off a good length and go between bat and pad to crash into middle-stump. It didn’t end there. When Virat Kohli was dismissed in the first innings, Konstas gestured towards the crowd, asking them to make some noise. Bumrah didn’t forget that and celebrated the wicket in much the same way.