Picture Credit: BCCI/IPL
Jasprit Bumrah has been one of the biggest names in the Indian cricket team ever since his debut for the nation in 2016. Five years down the line, Bumrah has already played 141 games at the highest level with 268 wickets to his credit. Notably, after making his white-ball debut for India, it took Bumrah around two years to play his maiden red-ball game for the nation. At the beginning many believed he wouldn't be that successful in Test cricket as he was in the limited-overs format, but as usual Bumrah proved his critics wrong and recently achieved the distinction of being the fastest Indian pacer to take 100 Test wickets, surpassing the legendary Kapil Dev.
Talking about his record in T20Is, in particular, Bumrah has bowled at an economy of 6.66. Meanwhile in IPL, he enjoys an economy of 7.39. With the passage of time, Bumrah has evolved as a bowler. In the IPL last year, he was the second-highest wicket-taker in the tournament. Batsmen especially nowadays find it hard to play Bumrah and that's the reason many end up surrendering themselves to the right-arm pacer.
However, there are a few batsmen who have managed to play Bumrah with comfort. Commenting on the same, former India opener and ex-KKR captain Gautam Gambhir has said that AB de Villiers is the only batsman who could take on the Mumbai Indians' pacer.
"He’s (Virat) got people like AB de Villiers and Glenn Maxwell, which is a huge cushion to have. Even if it’s not Maxwell, AB is a massive cushion because there is only one person who can take on someone like Jasprit Bumrah and it was AB de Villiers. I have not seen anyone else who has done that consistently against Bumrah, but AB is a freak,” said Gambhir in a conversation with Star Sports network.
It is worth recalling that former South Africa player AB de Villiers has been just another great force in the field of cricket. He has so far amassed 5056 IPL runs across 176 games at a strike rate of 152.38. The veteran batsman also has 3 centuries to his name in the tournament alongside 40 fifties.