Jasprit Bumrah reveals the secret behind nailing accurate yorkers

Jasprit Bumrah erupted on the scene as a T20 bowler with the ability to bowl a brilliant yorker. Under the tutelage of Lasith Malinga at the Mumbai Indians, he soon became one of the best exponents of the ball and is currently the best bowler for India across all the three formats.

The seamer has credited a lot of tennis ball cricket in his younger days for this skill set and says that he always wanted to bowl fast from a very young age.

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“As a kid, I played a lot of tennis ball cricket and with the tennis ball, you can bowl only one kind of a delivery. There’s the length in question, no bouncers. There’s only one ball that you have to practise. At that time, I played for fun. But later, when you start playing serious cricket, you realise the importance of that delivery,” Bumrah told Times of India.

He also said that he has to keep practising the art to be confident of executing it in a match in crunch situations. Also, with the varying formats and demands of the game, he has to adjust his own style.

“But not that because it naturally comes to me, I don’t have to keep practising it. It still takes the same amount of hard work to get it right in a match situation. I do spend enough hours now trying to get all the little things correct. The line, the length, the bounce. The game now actively involves playing three formats that are very different from each other. So, there’s constant work to be done to stay in tune with each of them,” Bumrah added.

The fast bowler will be one of the key components for India at the World Cup later this year and is expected to make a comeback into the Indian side after being rested for the ODI leg in Australia and New Zealand.

First Published: Feb 14, 2019 21:27 IST