Every slower ball is built on deception. Jasprit Bumrah, though, deals in illusion. Dwayne Bravo’s slower ball would float across full before dipping like a dead weight; Lasith Malinga’s toe-crushing variation was also delivered at a full length. However, Bumrah’s deliveries perform a chameleon act — from back of length to full, the entire range.
In this T20 World Cup, where South Africa’s Lungi Ngidi has been sensational with his slower ones, Bumrah presented his case with two gems: the ball that sucker-punched West Indies’ Roston Chase, and the one that deflated South Africa’s Ryan Rickelton.
Most bowlers use the back-of-hand slower delivery or the off-cutter, fingers cutting across the seam, preferring a length that lets the ball grip. Bumrah is different. He doesn’t just bowl slower balls; he chooses his moments with the precision of a filmmaker building suspense.
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Chase wasn’t new to the crease; he was cruising at 40 off 25 balls. The deception wasn’t in the release or the back-of-length line, but in the timing. Bumrah had just dismissed with a skidding away-seamer, and Chase wasn’t in counterattack mode. But ever since he outfoxed Shaun Marsh in the 2018 Melbourne Test with a slow pearler off the last ball before lunch — on Rohit Sharma’s suggestion —Bumrah has been choosing his slower balls to create real, proper cinematic surprise.
The ball to Chase wasn’t about extravagance; the batsman was just shaping for a conventional punch, a tap through covers for a single. But the ball stuck like gunk on asphalt, coming off the surface with agonising slowness. Before he had even made contact, Chase knew he was cooked. Before Chase knew, Bumrah must have known.
Australian bowling legend Glenn McGrath knows greatness when he sees it.
“He (Bumrah) just knows he’s such a quality bowler, just knows how to do the slower balls, release. I think it’s an individual thing. The fact that he hyper-extends, but his action, he gets right out there as well and probably releases the ball a foot and a half closer to the batsman than most other bowlers. Very unique with the way he goes. So, unique action,” McGrath said on Monday.
“You wouldn’t teach someone that because I don’t think they could do what he does. He’s very unique but does it very well. That’s why he’s one of the best in the world.”
The slower ball that dismissed Ryan Rickelton is worth multiple replays — not just for what happened, but for how. Bumrah didn’t bowl it like an off-break, fingers cutting across the seam. He didn’t split his fingers wide on either side, the way Craig McDermott once pioneered, borrowing from baseball pitchers. He didn’t bury it deep in the palm, or undercut it for that floaty, dipping Bravo special. His fingers on the ball looked, to all appearances, exactly as they always do.
But then he does one remarkable thing: he snaps his wrist sideways at the last instant. That single act accomplishes everything.
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It preserves his arm speed — deception, check. It keeps his fingers from cutting across the seam like conventional slower balls — concealment, check. And because it happens so late, the arm still comes over high and fast, stripping the batsman of any cue, any moment to recalibrate. Illusion of time, check.
As Bumrah’s right arm rolls over, there’s a fierce sideways snap — like turning a doorknob. For Rickelton, it opened the door to a nightmare. He was so dumbfounded he could only pop a dolly to mid-off. What makes it brilliant is that it’s logical — but only for Bumrah. That hyper-extended elbow, that unusual release point: the doorknob twist, isn’t a trick. It’s an extension. Why telegraph with a conventional off-break action when you can simply let the wrist do something strange and invisible at the very last instant?
And when he wants more, he goes further — releasing the ball as if squeezing a lemon. Which is precisely what he did to Shaun Marsh on the last ball before lunch in the 2018 Boxing Day Test. The ball dropped sharply, as if gravity had issued Marsh a personal reminder.
The one to Rickelton was a gentler squeeze, but the snap-wrist rotation still imparted enough revs — with identical arm speed, identical action — that the ball slowed, turned, and did its damage all the same. Chase, Rickelton … all in the lineage of batsmen who have been left dumbfounded by the illusion.
