'Bumrah did not impress me at all. I suggested him to change his action but...': Former India coach

Although, through his seven years of international cricket, Bumrah has emerged as an all-format genius, it wasn't a rosy start for Bumrah, who rather failed to impress a former India coach during his early days.

Exactly seven years back the world was introduced to the phenom named Jasprit Bumrah. India had witnessed his magic three years prior to that, in the Indian Premier League. Over the course of 10 years since, he not only took over the reigns from Lasith Malinga to become Mumbai India's bowling spearhead, with 325 international wickets in 161 appearances for India, the 29-year-old emerged as an all-format genius, who has now also led India in one of their recent Test matches. However, it wasn't a rosy start for Bumrah, who rather failed to impress a former India coach during his early days.

India pacer Jasprit Bumrah

The former India coach in reference here is Bharat Arun, who was one of the support staff during Ravi Shastri's tenure as a director of the Indian team and later as a head coach. However, Arun's story dates back to almost the beginning of the last decade. Bumrah was back then in his U19 days in Gujarat and had come for a trial. Arun, who was part of the National Cricket Academy's coach education project, as revealed in his interview with Cricbuzz's ‘Rise of New India’ show, said that he wasn't really impressed with Bumrah in his first meeting.

“I was in Ahmedabad when I was trialing with the National Cricket Academy's coach education project. I remember Vijay Patil who was then the head coach of Gujarat. He came to me and wanted me to take a look at a very young and promising fast bowler, who was quick. That was when I first met Bumrah. I saw him bowl at the net. First thing that struck was a very, very unique, unorthodox action. To be very honest, it did not impress. But they all said Bumrah was working on a lot of pace and was quick,” he recalled.

Two months later Arun met Bumrah yet again for an India U19 camp and he suggested to him to change his bowling action. However, on working towards it, he found out that it did not help him at all. And with the other players praising his bowling abilities, Arun was compelled to sit down with the physios to decide on Bumrah's bowling action.

“I met him briefly then, but same year, two months later, Bumrah was there at the NCA as part of the India U19 camp. To be very honest, I suggest Bumrah to change his action, but found that it did not help him at all. One thing I did realise as I kept watching him, he was really bowling sharp. His action was unique and the batsman who played him said that they found it difficult to pick his bowling. So when someone has such unique ability, changing him is not going to guarantee that he would do better,” he said.

It was eventually decided that Bumrah was stick to his unique bowling action but had to work a lot on his fitness to sustain the pressure his action puts on his back.

“So we did a meeting with the strength and conditioning coach and the physio to study his action and know what could be the effects of such an action. We concluded that it would put tremendous pressure on his back. So one thing was that if he had to continue with that action he had to work on his physical aspect and make his body very strong.”