NEWS
Follow UsCan Jasprit Bumrah be stopped? Will Jasprit Bumrah ever be stopped? Will Jasprit Bumrah stop?
At this moment in time, the answer for all three questions seems to be a straightforward ‘NO’.
On Day 1 of the Adelaide Test, Bumrah added another feather to his cap by becoming the third-ever Indian pacer to take 50+ Test wickets in a single calendar year. Before him, only Kapil Dev (twice) and Zaheer Khan had achieved that feat.
He followed this feat up on the morning of Day 2 of the Test by going past Zaheer’s tally of 51 Test wickets in 2002 to set a new record for the most wickets taken by an Indian pacer in a calendar year this century.
Fittingly, Bumrah set the record by dismissing one of the best batters this century, Steve Smith. Admittedly, though, the 52nd wicket came off one of his worst deliveries this series, with Smith tickling an awry delivery down leg-side to the wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant.
Most Test wickets for an Indian pacer in a calendar year (since 2000)
52* - Jasprit Bumrah, 2024
51 - Zaheer Khan, 2002
48 - Jasprit Bumrah, 2018
47 - Zaheer Khan, 2010
47 - Mohammad Shami, 2018
Most Test wickets for an Indian pacer in a calendar year
75 - Kapil Dev, 1983
74 - Kapil Dev, 1979
52* - Jasprit Bumrah, 2024
However, you can argue in a way that Bumrah deserved that luck, having been impeccable up until that point all morning.
The 31-year-old opened the bowling in the morning alongside Mohammed Siraj and sent the set Nathan McSweeney packing on the first ball of his second over, after starting the day off with a maiden.
Conceding just five runs off his first three overs of the day and asking plenty of questions, Bumrah eventually got Smith to tickle one down leg to pick his 52nd wicket of the year and set a 21st-century record for the Men in Blue.
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