"Facing Jasprit Bumrah isn't like facing anyone else in the World.."- Stuart Broad

Former England right-arm pacer Stuart Broad who formed a lethal bowling partnership with James Anderson for better parts of the last 2 decades, has revealed that he used to hate facing Indian speedster Jasprit Bumrah during his playing days. Broad’s comments have come in the light of Bumrah’s man-of-the-match winning spell across innings in the 2nd Test against England.

Jasprit Bumrah racked up 9 wickets in total and registered his best bowling figures by matches since making his Test debut in 2018 against South Africa. The 30-year-old carried on the momentum and form he picked up during India’s 28-run loss in the 1st Hyderabad Test to compliment the extraordinary knocks from the bat of Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill.

Broad has faced Bumrah as a batter on a couple of occasions in the 2018, 2020/21, and 2021/22 series. The 37-year-old retired from Test cricket last year after Australia retained the Ashes urn in England. He finished his red-ball career after registering 604 wickets from 167 matches for the Three Lions.

While he has experienced a few things of embarrassment in his illustrious career like getting smacked for 6 sixes in a row by Yuvraj Singh and not being able to win a single ICC silverware he stated that his most hated cricketing moments came when he went on to bat in front of Jasprit Bumrah.

Stuart Broad drew similarities between Bumrah and former Sri-Lanka pacer Lasith Malinga in terms of their unorthodox action as well as their accurate line lengths that are just so hard to pick up in any part of the world.

“Facing him isn’t like facing anyone else in the world and I used to hate it. Sri Lanka’s Lasith Malinga, with his slingy round-arm release, had that point of difference about him and Bumrah has something similar in that his deliveries are incredibly hard to pick up.” – Broad wrote in his Daily Mail column.

Jasprit Bumrah To Miss The 3rd Test At Rajkot?

If Jasprit Bumrah’s effortful bowling somehow went missing in the 1st Test despite collecting 6 wickets across innings, his bowling in the 2nd Test was nothing short of a true spectacle. After his 6-wicket haul in the 2nd innings, Bumrah collected 3 more in the 4th to finish with match figures of 9/91.

With that, he would first achieve the record of being the fastest Indian to amass 150 Test wickets in the fewest match and he also broke a 90-year-old record held by a former India bowler L Amar Singh of best match figures against England in a red-ball match on home soil.

He proved to be a clear-cut match-winner for India yet again but there is a talk about Jasprit Bumrah missing the 3rd Test in Rajkot, probably because of workload management. India head coach Rahul Dravid himself had said that none of the pacers in the squad will be playing in all 5 Tests and that was implemented in the 2nd Test with Mohammed Siraj’s absence.

The BCCI selection committee is yet to announce the squad for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Tests but if Jasprit Bumrah doesn’t appear for India in Rajkot, it will be very good news for the visiting English contingent.