Mumbai bowling coach Shane Bond could not stop praising death-over specialist Jasprit Bumrah. The 23-year-old Gujarat pacer has been included in the Indian team for the Champions Trophy. It will be his first time to England, and Bond is confident of his Mumbai Indians bowler doing well there too.
“He’s got a skill set which is going to make him successful wherever he plays in the world. The way the guy is bowling in this tournament, if he carries this form through to that Champions Trophy, then he’s going to play a big role in India’s success,” Bond said on what advice he has given to Bumrah about bowling in English conditions.
The 41-year-old from Christchurch added: “It makes me look good when he (Bumrah) bowls the way he does. He is probably the best one in our team to bowl the pressure overs because he has got the skills and the temperament to do. I think he has done that for Mumbai and India.
“When we looked at our bowling attack, we tried to balance and put parts around him. Normally, you look a team like ours, you say (Lasith) Malinga will naturally do the death bowling. In the end Harbhajan has done that and we had to tweak our bowling attack, and make Bumrah bowling at the back end and start to use Malinga bowling in the middle overs. When you start to base your attack around a bowler like Jasprit, that shows his quality. I think he will definitely play Test cricket and can be a world-class bowler across all formats.”
Bond said that it was stressful to watch his team when they had to defend 29 in the last three overs against Rising Pune Supergiant in Sunday’s final.
“I think it’s probably easier from a playing point of view than watching,” Bond said. “That’s one of the great things about the IPL. It’s a great blend of coaches and players from different countries. And, people who don’t necessarily don’t think would associate with each other, end up being the best of friends.
“I think from our point of view, for Mumbai, we’ve tried to share the load, just take it away from Rohit, and pass it on to guys like Hardik, Pollard, Mahela, myself, the coaching staff so that when pressure comes on, these people offer (him) advice from different parts of the field to deal with the stress. Ultimately, Rohit’s got to make the decision on the field.
“And, that’s what he’s done so well as guys come through and offer him their thoughts, and Rohit’s been really decisive in what he wants to do. So, that’s the way we’ve played in the whole tournament. We try to play as a team. We tried to make sure that we had all bases covered. And then we trusted and took that all the stuff into the park. It’s worked out perfectly for us,” Bond explained.
Bond also said that the experienced Malinga’s advice helped Mitchell Johnson during the final over when RPS needed 13. “I spoke to him about it today (Monday). He had a couple of different ideas. Mali (Lasith Malinga) came up to him and said to him the last couple of balls, ‘mate just bowl a couple of straight yorkers, and you’ll be ok’, So, he took Malinga’s advice and it was successful. So, that was one advantage we had. We had some successful and very good fast bowlers bowling at the end to the opposition.”
