FEATURES
Follow UsIf WG Grace got a time machine and transported himself to the Optus Stadium in Perth on November 22, 2024 to see how cricket looks like in the future, the man with the most famous beard in cricket history would have a shock bigger than his gambling scandals.
It won’t be because of how modern Test cricket looks, how huge the stadiums are, or how different the sport is altogether. It would be because he would have just seen two fast bowlers, Jasprit Bumrah and Pat Cummins, walking out for the toss in the first Border Gavaskar Trophy Test as the leaders of their teams.
You see, in Grace’s era, and later too, the game of cricket in England was divided into amateurs and professionals. People from working-class backgrounds were the professionals who did the hard yards in the field by fielding or bowling. The aristocrats and the elite of the English society were amateurs, and they mostly just batted. Naturally, these amateurs were the ones who captained the teams, more due to societal status than cricketing skill.
That’s why being a bowler is almost being reduced to a second-class citizen of the game. That’s why when a kid in India or anywhere in the world picks a skill in the game to start with at home, they’ll more often than not pick a bat.
Hence, when Bumrah of India and Cummins of Australia walk out to the toss as captains of their cricketing nations, representing their fans in a blazer as regal as their illustrious careers, it won’t be just a trivia moment. It would be one of the few rare instances in cricket history when the hierarchy in the game’s oldest format was upended.
History will not be the only thing created tomorrow at the Optus stadium. Bumrah and Cummin’s legacies will coincide as they shake each other’s hands, and the palms of destiny will intertwine.
The rarity factor of this happenstance is so high that you won’t even need all your fingers to count the instances where two genuine fast bowlers have walked out as Test captains in the 2560 Tests that have been played. This century, there are just three other instances despite bowlers enjoying much more attention and financial success than before. Even before 2000, only Bob Willis, Imran Khan, Kapil Dev, Wasim Akram and Courtney Walsh walked out to a Test match toss together amongst genuine pacers.
While cricket’s inherent classism (between batting, bowling and fielding) and resultant prejudices have had a huge role to play here, fitness has certainly been the biggest practical reason cited by fans and experts alike on the topic of fast bowling captains.
That’s why when you see Bumrah and Cummins leading their sides in the same Test, it would also be a testament to their stature in every single aspect of the game — whether it be their social status or their cricketing talents and fitness, both mental and physical.
How else would you describe these two anomalies of nature, who play all three formats and the Indian Premier League (IPL) and still find themselves not only at the pinnacle of bowling charts but also amongst the busiest stars of international cricket?
What’s even more remarkable here is that nothing like this was ever supposed to happen. Forget the fact that these are two fast-bowling captains. If you just go back to their first steps in the game, it would have been preposterous to suggest that the man with the most whacky action in Test cricket at the moment would captain his Test side against another man whose career was declared over before it even properly began.
Take Cummins for instance. When he first appeared at the Test arena in Johannesburg in 2011, it felt like the writer of mythologies had decided to introduce a fast-bowling god into the pantheon of divinity. He was bowling 150 kmph thunderbolts straight out of Thor’s lightning playbook. But that lanky, barely-an-adult guy who had taken 7/117 on Test debut was fragile. He broke down like a Ferrari on a desert track.
It took him six years to make a comeback in the side. Imagine those six years for him as he built himself back, brick by brick, stone by stone. He completed a bachelor's degree in business and majored in marketing while being a contracted player with Cricket Australia (CA).
Meanwhile, the invincible Australians had become fallible and human after Ricky Ponting and the greats of his generation exited the game. Steve Smith had emerged as the new poster boy of Australian cricket, but sandpaper was scrubbed so hard over his future that all front-row leadership possibilities were scrapped. Tim Paine, the man for crisis, saw an undignified end to his career with a loss against India at home.
When no one was left, CA was almost hand-twisted into making Cummins the skipper, as most other options weren’t good enough. Cummins 2.0 was a human incarnation of that fast-bowling god we saw in Johannesburg in 2011. He wasn’t flashy like a god anymore. He had lost some speed. But he had transformed himself into a bowling machine that’ll bowl boring stuff and pitch the ball on that good length until he makes a crater in the pitch. That’s why his 269 Test wickets have come at an average of 22.53, amongst the best in history.
Meanwhile, Bumrah’s entire existence as a fast bowler is an open rebellion against convention and tradition. He’s like a postmodern painter drawing the Mona Lisa. That’s why just for him to survive with that action in Indian domestic cricket is an aberration in itself. However, Bumrah didn’t just survive. He thrived and thrived so hard that he became the biggest match-winner India has produced this century, arguably ever.
However, Bumrah’s impact isn’t limited to his astounding numbers in all three formats of the game or the T20 World Cup he just won.
For an average Indian, batting is what cricket is. Bowling and bowlers are thought of as facilitators so that the batters can show their skills. Bowling is too working class. That’s why even Kapil Dev, whose bowling was much more valuable for India than his batting, is remembered more for his flamboyant batting than his pace bowling. The Tendulkars, the Kohlis, the Dravids, and the Dhonis occupy Indian cricketing imagination at a religious level.
That’s why when the crowd goes “Boom Boom Bumrah” in the first session of a Test match, my heartstrings play a melody that defies the churn of Indian cricketing history.
He’s not just an outlying dot in the line of Indian fast bowlers. He’s an asterisk in bold and italics — a star who broke through the darkness of convention and made a batting-loving nation yearn to watch him bowl.
What’s even more serendipitous for Bumrah is that after Rohit Sharma is done with captaincy, India might turn to him for being the full-time Test skipper as the other cricketers are quite young and new to the setup. What started in England in 2022 as an aberration might just become the norm.
That’s why when these two will lead their sides in Perth tomorrow, it won’t be just a fascinating incident of fast bowlers captaining their teams.
It would also be a case of two anomalies challenging and changing the tide of cricketing history not by actively revolting against it, but by forcing the world to give them what they deserve by being the best at what they do.
