Allan Border hails 'remarkable' Bumrah after India pacer claims 50 wickets in Australia

Brisbane (The Uttam Hindu): Former Australia Test captain Allan Border has rated star India pacer Jasprit Bumrah as highly as West Indies great Malchom Marshall and said he has not seen anyone like the Bumrah, who rarely bowls a wicketless spell. Continuing his remarkable performance in 2024, Jasprit Bumrah achieved a significant milestone by becoming only the second Indian bowler, after Kapil Dev, to claim 50 Test wickets in Australia. This feat was accomplished when he dismissed Mitchell Starc on the third day of the third Test in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Notably, since the beginning of the 20th century, no bowler with a minimum of 20 wickets in Australia has maintained a better bowling average than Bumrah's exceptional 17.82. Bumrah claimed superb figures of 6-76, as the hosts lost their final three wickets for just 40 runs on the third day of the Gabba Test on Monday. "I can't properly compare him to Marshall because I never faced Bumrah but just watching him there is not much (between them). Bumrah is remarkable. He rarely bowls a spell without taking a wicket. He is different," Border told the News Corp. "Because of his action, he lets the ball go later. And he smiles all the time. He can beat a batsman three times in a row and smile each time. I have never seen anyone like him," he said.

Earlier on Day 2, the 31-year-old pace maestro registered his third Test five-wicket haul in Australia. Among Indian bowlers, only Kapil Dev has more five-wicket hauls in Australia, with a total of five, while Anil Kumble sits second in the list with four fifer on Australian soil. This was Bumrah's 12th five-wicket haul in Test cricket and his 8th in SENA countries (South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia). He has become the first Indian to do so. Bumrah broke the record of Kapil Dev, who is second in the list with 7 fifers to his name. With 50 wickets on Australian soil, Bumrah looks certain to surpass Kapil Dev's record of 51 wickets in Australia. He is also well on the way to breaking the record for the most wickets taken in a single edition of Border-Gavaskar Trophy series. In the ongoing series, he has 18 scalps with two matches to go. It puts him over halfway to topping Harbhajan Singh's mark of 32 wickets in the three-Test series in India in 2001.