Former Sri Lankan pacer Lasith Malinga (left) and India pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah. (Photos: AP, Express file)
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.
A cursory glance cannot separate Malinga and Bumrah, differing by mere fractions, across phases, conditions and on sheer invincibility.
Malinga stacked up 107 for Sri Lanka in 83 innings while sending down 1799 deliveries in all. In his 83rd innings for India, Bumrah picked up his 107th after sending six extra deliveries, off his 1805th ball.
Across the 12 Full-Member countries, only 12 pacers have reached 100 T20I wickets. Malinga and Bumrah are the only men to concurrently satisfy three back-breaking factors – a sub 7.5 economy, producing a wicket within every 17 deliveries and averaging below 21.
While being nearly as deadly, Bumrah eclipses Malinga (7.42) with an astounding 6.44 economy rate – the benchmark for all bowlers from Test-playing nations, with at least 40 wickets. Malinga noses ahead by a whisker on the wicket-taking front, producing a dismissal every 16.8 balls to Bumrah’s 17.0. Despite the rapidly surging batting intent, Bumrah bags a wicket for 18.28 runs. Malinga nabbed each for 20.79.
About 40 percent of their dismissal patterns are synchronous; Malinga has bagged 43 of his wickets bowled, while Bumrah has collected 41. There are negligible variances in their efficiency across the course of play, too, though Bumrah remains a standout on the economical front.
The death-overs confines have yielded them the most wickets, with Malinga producing a wicket every 11.3 deliveries, marginally ahead of Bumrah (11.9). Yet, the Indian pace god’s 6.97 economy for 49 wickets in overs 17-20 not only eclipses Malinga (8.39) but also stands as a supernatural number amidst the evolved T20 sluggers.
Slam-bang cricket seldom allows such romanticism, but Malinga’s peak years were fittingly wedged between T20 cricket’s early expansion and the year of Bumrah’s international debut and first significant IPL season in 2016.
Between January 2010 and December 2015, Malinga topped the T20 format (including leagues) across the world with 243 wickets at 16.0 SR, totalling 62.3 percent of his career wickets (390) in this period. Then came along Bumrah.
When he hung up his boots in 2020, Malinga had finished as the second-highest wicket-taker in all T20s, behind Dwayne Bravo. Six seamers stand ahead of his 390 career scalps, yet none can pose a better economy (7.07) or strike rate (16.6). With only 59 wickets separating their career hauls, a snapshot would derive Bumrah (6.9 eco, 17.6 SR) as his worthy successor here too.
But for the out-and-out wicket-taker that he was, Malinga remains the most attacking pacer in that he reeled in wickets in clumps more often than other pacers, standing comfortably at the top with 15 instances of producing four or more wickets in a match. In contrast, Bumrah only has five such spells across 261 games and none at the international level as yet.
There is a World Cup defence heating up, and another counter for Bumrah to catch up with the Lankan laser gun. Malinga leads the pace pack in T20 World Cups (38), with Bumrah (26) close on his heels.
It is vexing to pick one. Bumrah’s mastery in an increasingly batting-oriented era or the first-of-its-kind Malinga experience that bent T20 cricket to his wont.
Malinga made the bowlers feel they belonged. Bumrah makes the batters feel they don’t.
Stay updated with the latest sports news across Cricket, Football, Chess, and more. Catch all the action with real-time live cricket score updates and in-depth coverage of ongoing matches.
