Before Jassi, there was Mali.
Before oppositions began to trim expectations for the Jasprit Bumrah equation in T20 cricket, Lasith Malinga had checked the unfettered batting advantage by simply being its first great nemesis.
The Sri Lankan daakaththa, the sickle-like slingman, would also be an unlikely mentor to the boy from Ahmedabad during his early days in the IPL at Mumbai. Malinga was the ripening Bumrah’s first life-skills coach, a veteran who would make him believe that he could sustain a living with his hyperextended right arm and other eccentricities. That was 13 years ago.
Cut to Wednesday in Visakhapatnam, on an uncharacteristically insipid evening against New Zealand, Bumrah still touched a special feat with a caught-and-bowled dismissal.
The current era’s pace bowling freak brought his 107th T20I scalp, equalling the outlier of the previous generation a decade after first donning the India blues.
While his round-armed sorcery inspired a steady cult in the sub-continent, none have lived up to Malinga’s exalted status. None, barring his perpendicular adherent, who brought his own geometry set to T20I bowling and reproduced eerily similar numbers.