Jasprit Bumrah entered the arena like a gladiator and we stood still in the presence of greatness, writes OLIVER HOLT after India bowler dismantles England's top order at Headingley
The floodlights came on at Headingley in the early afternoon of an oppressive June day, the better to illuminate the scene. It bore its moment in the spotlight, too, because it presaged one of the most gladiatorial entrances of any sport: the arrival of the great fast bowler.
When Jasprit Bumrah stood at the top of his mark at the Kirkstall Lane End, everything seemed to stop. The hum of the hordes on the Western Terrace quieted. Even the proud brick houses on Cardigan Road, their attic windows open in the heat, gazed down on the contest.
Whatever else happens in this summer of sport, the sight of Bumrah bowling at English batsmen will be one of its highlights. Because you need know little about cricket to recognise when you watch him, and when you watch the effect he has on opponents, that you are in the presence of greatness.
Only 86 bowlers have taken more than 200 Test wickets and none have done so at a lower average than Bumrah's 19.4. His slingshot action makes him an enigma, too, difficult to read, difficult to play against. It adds to the compelling nature of the spectacle.
The contest between Bumrah and Joe Root, England's best batsman of this era, and perhaps of any era, may yet come to define this five-Test series but the first five-over spell of his visit to England was a wonderful glimpse of the dramas and dangers and alarms and unease that his bowling will plunge England into.
Part of the theatre is the idiosyncrasy of his technique. He starts his run-up like a nag, halting and reluctant, not looking like he wants to continue, seeming as if he might give it all up and start again.
And then he accelerates into it. And by the time he arrives at the crease, he is almost dancing. Now he's not a nag. He's a Lipizzaner, prancing and snorting, elegant and imperious, the best bowler in the world.
'Bumrah's first half a dozen steps to the crease aren't even running,' former England spinner Phil Tufnell said on Test Match Special. 'He bowls 90mph off about four paces.' The ball's trajectory, coming from behind the perpendicular, makes his deliveries even more difficult to face.
Zak Crawley had the misfortune to face him first. He looked trapped before the ball had left Bumrah's right hand. He edged the fourth ball of England's innings past the slips for a four to third man. That was as good as it got for Crawley.
Bumrah's sixth ball was a Jaffa. It did Crawley all ends up. The England opener tried to get behind it, tried to fend it off, but it turned him inside out and caught the edge of his bat. It flew straight to Karun Nair at first slip and he caught it without alarm.
Only when Mohammed Siraj came on did Duckett and new batsman Ollie Pope find any respite. Facing Siraj felt like freedom compared to facing Bumrah. They loosened up and played their shots. They were in charge. When Bumrah returned, Duckett and Pope were in captivity again.
Bumrah's seventh ball was an outswinger. Duckett swiped at it outside his off stump. Bumrah had deceived him. The ball fell just in front of gully. It was an escape.
Bumrah's 10th ball was a yorker, a brilliant yorker. His yorker is a thing of legend, a delivery perfected by India's equivalent of kicking a football against a garage door again and again and again to hone technique.
Bumrah perfected his yorker as a kid by bowling a cricket ball into the skirting board at his home in Ahmedabad. 'Summers in India can be really hot in the afternoon,' Bumrah told The Guardian earlier this year, 'and parents don't let kids out. I was a hyperactive kid, lots of energy, but my mother would sleep in the afternoon.
'Then I found that if I bowled a ball into the skirting board, it didn't make a sound. So I could bowl without disturbing her. I did not imagine at the time it would develop into a yorker, I really didn't know what one was.'
This yorker did not hit a skirting board. It hit Duckett's boot. Bumrah was convinced it was out but the umpire disagreed. India reviewed it. The ball had pitched outside leg. Duckett was reprieved.
Bumrah's 14th ball found late swing. Pope flailed at it. It flew at catchable height through the gap where a fourth slip would have been. By the end of the over, Bumrah would be bowling to five slips and a backward point.
Four balls later, Bumrah found Duckett's edge again. The ball flew past Yashasvi Jaiswal at gully. If you were to be uncharitable, you would have said it was a drop. India's fielders put their hands on their heads in despair. Bumrah smiled.
With the last ball of his fourth over, Bumrah got the better of Duckett yet again. The England opener drove at the ball but could not keep it down and it flew to Ravindra Jadeja at backward point. Jadeja is one of India's best fielders. It was a comfortable chance. To general astonishment, he put the ball down. This time, Bumrah did not smile. He beat the air in frustration.
England's torture was almost over. Bumrah's fire finally began to dim.
With the last ball of his final over of the spell, Duckett drove him through the covers for four. It was the first time any of England's top three batsmen had looked comfortable in Bumrah's entire opening salvo.
It had been a treat, frankly, an opportunity to see the best Test bowler in the world at the top of his game, exhibiting his craft. He could have taken five wickets but one was enough to show us what this summer holds.
He did eventually bowl Duckett later in the afternoon. The batsman had almost had his nine lives by then. And a minute or two after 5.30pm, Bumrah bowled his first ball of this series to Root. He found an edge. It did not carry.
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Times
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- Times
30 years on from that World Cup, how rugby changed South Africa
A South African school recently organised a 'wear your profession day', asking pupils to dress for the jobs they wanted to do as grown-ups. Some wore white medical coats or pretend pilot hats. One wielded a tennis racket. But the majority of the racially diverse children arrived in the green and gold attire of their heroes, the Springboks, the national rugby team. 'I've been to schools all over the world but I've never seen rugby and sport permeating a school's life as much as it does in South Africa,' said Grant Butler, headmaster of Grey Junior School in the Eastern Cape. As he spoke, the joyful chaos of a nine-year-olds' match spilt in through the window — shouts of children and cheers from proud parents. In this country forged through political struggle and extraordinary resilience, rugby has become much more than a sport. Many people here call it the cornerstone of post-apartheid South Africa. On Tuesday the country celebrates the 30th anniversary of its first victory in the rugby World Cup in 1995 when, just a year after being sworn in as the country's first black president, Nelson Mandela famously donned the Springbok rugby jersey, in those days a symbol of white, Afrikaner pride that was loathed by the black majority — black people generally did not play rugby. Mandela's embrace of the game was more than political theatre. He wanted the nation to follow his example, binding around a once-hated white team in pursuit of reconciliation. How he seized on the oval ball as a tool of nation-building is a remarkable tale of courage, hope and magnanimity told in the Hollywood film Invictus (2009) directed by Clint Eastwood with Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as the Afrikaner Springbok captain, Francois Pienaar. 'Mandela told me that in order to really persuade, you had to appeal not to people's minds but to their hearts,' said John Carlin, author of Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation, on which the Hollywood film was based. 'The World Cup in 1995 was the first time the country came together. Blacks and whites were united in one common purpose and goal, winning the World Cup. On the day of the final, racial divisions just dissolved.' 'To do what Mandela did took a lot of guts,' said Kobus Wiese, who was a second row forward in the famous final against New Zealand and is now a television rugby commentator. 'He reached out to tell us, the common men, that, 'If I the president can do this, there's no reason for you not to do it. We can have our differences but we can overcome them as well.'' In 1995 the country had only just emerged from international isolation after the lifting of apartheid and the Springboks were the underdogs in the final. 'The country had just come back from the brink of civil war, we had fallen behind for many years with our training techniques, we weren't given any chance by anyone,' said Wiese, 61, a tractor-sized figure with a shock of white hair. His first sense that rugby was more than just a game came on the day a helicopter touched down on the training field and Mandela stepped out. 'We thought, 'What the hell is this?'' Wiese recalled in a café run by his wife in Franschhoek, a picturesque town in the winelands east of Cape Town: whenever black South Africans had come to Springbok games in the past it was generally to cheer for their opponents. Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison for his role in resisting apartheid and leading the armed struggle against white minority rule, meekly apologised for disturbing the players. 'He said, 'I know you are busy preparing for the World Cup but I was wondering if I could spend a bit of time with you?'' Wiese said. They went into the clubhouse for tea and sandwiches. 'Mandela wanted to find out more about rugby and the World Cup and what we thought our chances were. Then he said, 'It's very important that we do well.' He kept saying it, 'It's very important for more than the game of rugby.'' Such was Mandela's aura and influence that the entire country was soon rallying around the Springboks. 'As we progressed through the games, in the hotels, people in the streets, people walking up to you, the lady cleaning your room in the hotel, they were all massively involved in supporting you, it was incredible.' After the victory Mandela, still wearing his Springbok gear, famously handed the cup to Pienaar, saying: 'Thank you very much for what you have done for our country.' Pienaar replied: 'Mr President, it is nothing compared to what you have done for our country.' Desmond Tutu, the archbishop who had played a key role in ending apartheid, called it 'quite incredible, quite unbelievable. It had the effect of just … turning around the country. It was … an extraordinary thing — it said, 'Yes, it is possible for us to become one nation.'' The vast majority of the 63,000 people in Johannesburg's Ellis Park stadium were white, most of them Afrikaners. They had been conditioned to believe their president was a terrorist but rose to their feet when they saw him after the match to chant his name in thunderous admiration: 'Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!' 'We didn't have the support of 63,000 South Africans today. We had the support of 42 million,' was how Pienaar put it. Thirty years on, the spirit of 1995 endures. A national rugby obsession has fuelled three more World Cup victories. 'Rugby, and more generally sport, is a beacon of hope for our country, it gets us through tough times,' said Joel Stransky, the Springbok fly-half who scored all of the 15 points in the 1995 final, including the decisive drop goal that won the match in extra time six minutes before the whistle. He remembered Mandela, a former professional boxer, coming into the changing room before the game. He again apologised for disturbing the players while they were 'focused' on the task ahead. 'Then he wished us all luck individually. That was the Mandela magic. We felt touched by his magic, his kindness and leadership. It was extraordinary to see how he had survived all that time in jail with forgiveness in his heart.' Mandela would be proud of today's Springboks, Stransky believes. They include several black players, including the captain, Siya Kolisi, who married Rachel Smith, a white events organiser with whom he had two children. The couple separated last year but, for a while, at least, seemed an embodiment of the 'rainbow nation', or racial harmony dreamed of by Mandela. The former president died in 2013, but rugby continues to bring people together — particularly after big World Cup victories when crowds of black and white revellers sing, dance together and wave South African flags while wearing the green and gold of their heroes. The bonhomie around rugby, though, is not limited to World Cup victories. 'Rugby is the language a lot of South Africans speak these days, it's the language of unity,' Butler said. His school is where Kolisi learned to play rugby on a scholarship, perhaps explaining why so many pupils want to be Springboks. Any day the national rugby team is playing is known as 'Bok Day' when, across the racial, social and economic lines, schools and businesses relax dress codes, encouraging people to wear green and gold gear and braais, or barbecues, are fired up across the country. On such days much of Port Elizabeth, a renowned rugby hub, is decked in green and gold. 'You can be standing in the queue to buy a chicken at Woolworths and you'll strike up a conversation with someone from a very different cultural background to yourself, you're wearing the same colours,' Butler said. 'For that wonderful moment, you are facing in the same direction and supporting the same group of people. It's a wonderfully unifying thing.' Despite rugby's unifying power, viewing habits reflect a deep economic divide. Most white fans watch on pay television while black audiences rely on free state television broadcasts, where they made up 58 per cent of viewers in 2017, according to one survey, compared to just 3 per cent on pay television. Yet in stadiums, a growing and more diverse crowd signals slow but real change. In many ways, though, Mandela's dreams for the country remain unfulfilled. Politicians today are always eager to step into the glow of Springbok triumphs but Wiese, the second row forward, hopes they stay away from the anniversary gala dinner he and other members of the 1995 World Cup final line-up will attend on Tuesday at Ellis Park, the scene of their triumph three decades ago. The former player said Mandela and his allies in the anti-apartheid struggle would 'roll over in their graves' at the corruption among their successors in the ANC, the former liberation movement turned political party. He quoted Oliver Tambo, a close friend of Mandela: 'He said when politicians start driving Mercedes and living in huge mansions, they've lost the plot because then they are not working for the people. And I agree 100 per cent.' Flawed as it is, South Africa today stands in stark contrast to the legally enforced inhumanity Mandela helped to dismantle. Ryan Christianson, 51, the son of an Indian mother and white South African father, believes he may have been the first non-white boy to play rugby after being sent to a white school in the Eastern Cape in the 1980s. His parents had been barred from living together under an apartheid-era 'Immorality Act', which prohibited sexual relations between white people and those of other races. 'I'd come off the field black and blue, the other kids would target you in the scrum because of your skin colour,' he said. 'They were born into racism.' With Mandela, the nation changed. 'Suddenly non-white people believed that rugby was theirs. Recent World Cup victories with a black captain lifting the cup have shown a nation of non-white players emerging and saying this is our sport now too.' Christianson is now the fundraising manager at Cape Town's Masiphumelele Pumas Rugby Club which includes white, black and so-called 'coloured' (mixed race) players from all walks of life. He recently secured £20,000 in funding from wealthy white donors to install floodlights at the club's field. 'Mandela taught us that unity is possible. Rugby showed us what it looked like,' he said. 'Now we have to live it.'
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Ben Duckett thrilled as Ollie Pope silences questions about his England place
Pope was at the centre of an outstanding day of ultra-competitive Test cricket against India, finishing with exactly 100 not out as England fought their corner under pressure in this Rothesay Series opener. He walked out to bat on the second afternoon with everything stacked against him – India boasting 471 first-innings runs and the peerless Jasprit Bumrah having just made short work of Zak Crawley with the new ball. That 💯 moment… Take a bow. Oliver John Douglas Pope 🫡 🤝 @IGcom — England Cricket (@englandcricket) June 21, 2025 With grey clouds overhead and floodlights needed to improve visibility in the middle, it was a deeply unappetising situation for a player who came into the game with his place under scrutiny. A few hours later, having guided his side to 209 for three, the mere suggestion that he might be replaced any time soon felt fanciful in the extreme. 'It was goosebumps when he got his hundred, you could see what it meant to him,' said Duckett, who shared a stand of 122 with the vice-captain. 'He probably couldn't walk out in tougher conditions, Jasprit running down the hill with the lights on. 'There's no better feeling than that, scoring 100 against that attack after coming out at four for one. You can see that in the way he celebrated but it didn't just mean a lot to him, it meant a huge amount in the dressing room as well.' Much had been made of a theoretical head-to-head between Pope and rising star Jacob Bethell, a notion captain Ben Stokes swatted away on the eve of the match as he threw his full support behind the incumbent. The selection debate has been too loud to avoid but the Surrey man may well have settled it in the most public way possible, bat in hand in front of a sellout Saturday crowd in Yorkshire. 'We're very good at keeping things in the dressing room but obviously you can hear the noise from outside,' admitted Duckett. 'We're not having discussions in the dressing room about who's going to play. But the way Popey has dealt with that has been superb. It sums up and proves why he's England's number three and is doing what he's doing.' Duckett had a front row seat as Bumrah threw everything he had at England. The unpredictable paceman finished with three for 48 from 13 electric overs but could easily have doubled his haul given the number of edges, chances and near misses he generated. The last of those saw him have Harry Brook caught for a duck only to be called for a no-ball, a late gut punch, but he will surely be back for more. 'He's the best bowler in the world,' said Duckett, who was eventually bowled for 62. 'He's good in India on the flattest pitches ever and, when he's coming down the hill with the lights on, swinging both ways, it's tough. 'I feel we minimised the damage early on, it could have been a lot worse today so we're pretty happy with the position we're in.'
Leader Live
2 hours ago
- Leader Live
Ben Duckett thrilled as Ollie Pope silences questions about his England place
Pope was at the centre of an outstanding day of ultra-competitive Test cricket against India, finishing with exactly 100 not out as England fought their corner under pressure in this Rothesay Series opener. He walked out to bat on the second afternoon with everything stacked against him – India boasting 471 first-innings runs and the peerless Jasprit Bumrah having just made short work of Zak Crawley with the new ball. That 💯 moment… Take a bow. Oliver John Douglas Pope 🫡 🤝 @IGcom — England Cricket (@englandcricket) June 21, 2025 With grey clouds overhead and floodlights needed to improve visibility in the middle, it was a deeply unappetising situation for a player who came into the game with his place under scrutiny. A few hours later, having guided his side to 209 for three, the mere suggestion that he might be replaced any time soon felt fanciful in the extreme. 'It was goosebumps when he got his hundred, you could see what it meant to him,' said Duckett, who shared a stand of 122 with the vice-captain. 'He probably couldn't walk out in tougher conditions, Jasprit running down the hill with the lights on. 'There's no better feeling than that, scoring 100 against that attack after coming out at four for one. You can see that in the way he celebrated but it didn't just mean a lot to him, it meant a huge amount in the dressing room as well.' Much had been made of a theoretical head-to-head between Pope and rising star Jacob Bethell, a notion captain Ben Stokes swatted away on the eve of the match as he threw his full support behind the incumbent. The selection debate has been too loud to avoid but the Surrey man may well have settled it in the most public way possible, bat in hand in front of a sellout Saturday crowd in Yorkshire. 'We're very good at keeping things in the dressing room but obviously you can hear the noise from outside,' admitted Duckett. 'We're not having discussions in the dressing room about who's going to play. But the way Popey has dealt with that has been superb. It sums up and proves why he's England's number three and is doing what he's doing.' Duckett had a front row seat as Bumrah threw everything he had at England. The unpredictable paceman finished with three for 48 from 13 electric overs but could easily have doubled his haul given the number of edges, chances and near misses he generated. The last of those saw him have Harry Brook caught for a duck only to be called for a no-ball, a late gut punch, but he will surely be back for more. 'He's the best bowler in the world,' said Duckett, who was eventually bowled for 62. 'He's good in India on the flattest pitches ever and, when he's coming down the hill with the lights on, swinging both ways, it's tough. 'I feel we minimised the damage early on, it could have been a lot worse today so we're pretty happy with the position we're in.'
