Jasprit Bumrah doesn't bowl to take wickets. Wait, what? He has the 16th-best strike-rate among 162 men who have taken 100 ODI wickets. Then how can it be said he doesn't bowl to get wickets?
Because he doesn't. Let me explain. Despite being so good at taking wickets, Bumrah doesn't take them as often as two of his India contemporaries: Mohammed Shami and Kuldeep Yadav. His strike-rate of 30.7 - just under two wickets a match - is only marginally better than Yuzvendra Chahal's 30.9.
He is too proud to bowl for wickets. There is nothing wrong in bowling for wickets, but sometimes you have to take risks to do that. He trusts himself too much to be taking risks as the linchpin of the attack. It is a testament to the skill and the fitness of Bumrah that he is almost never the first one to pull the trigger. Unless there is help in the pitch.
India's second match in this World Cup was played on the truest Feroz Shah Kotla square in a long time, and immediately Bumrah realised he had to bowl on a good length or short of a good length. Forty-three of the 60 balls he delivered were pitched there according to ESPNcricinfo's logs. A further six yorkers counted as not your standard wicket-taking balls. He drew more false responses from the batters than anyone in a match where 273 was chased down in 35 overs.
Drawing a mistake or beating the bat is Bumrah's joy. Wickets are incidental as the four at the Kotla were. Or as Bumrah says, "money in the bank" that he can cash in any time. "I am not result oriented," Bumrah said. "Just because I have taken four wickets, that doesn't mean that I am very, very happy or I have done something extraordinary. I just go with my preparation. I go with the process that I feel is right. I try to read the wickets and try to find the best answers that work on that wicket.
"As simple as that, not thinking about the results because I've got results today, I'm very, very good, that doesn't work in my book. I try to back my strengths, try to read the wicket, and try to give my best."
Searching for wickets is not to be scoffed at, but that is other bowlers' job. They have the leeway to take some extra time before they pull their lengths back. Bumrah wants to make the batter take risks while being the fullest he can be. It is an art that many veterans don't master.
"This wicket was quite a batting track that we realised early on as well when we started bowling," Bumrah said. "There was a little bit of seam but the ball was coming on to the bat really well from the first over so we realised that. So, we are just trying to hit the hard length, try to make it as difficult as possible and try to make them hit difficult shots. So that was the plan and probably trying to do that."
Bumrah's first wicket was that nibbling length when the opener Ibrahim Zadran couldn't resist having a poke. In his second spell, Bumrah didn't try anything fancy. Then that bewitching slower ball got him a wicket in his final spell followed by a ball that seamed in the 45th over.
Bumrah took his philosophical attitude towards results to an extreme when he was asked what he felt of his comeback from a pretty serious injury so far. "I am a little detached person," Bumrah said. "I don't know what's going around in the world. So I just looked at what I have to do on that particular day and obviously reading the game, reading your strengths that have worked for me in the past as well, keeping all of those things in mind, keep going forward."
An example of his expertise is that Bumrah didn't unleash the outswinger in international cricket even though he had been bowling it in the nets. He could give the batter an easy delivery if he went to a delivery he hadn't yet perfected. There is no bowler in the current era who is so unbothered by the number of wickets he gets, but he still keeps getting them.