Captain Virat Kohli hails Jasprit Bumrah’s ‘absolutely unbelievable spell’

India captain Virat Kohli celebrates winning the fourth Test. Pic/Bipin Patel

India skipper Virat Kohli marked out Jasprit Bumrah for special praise after the Gujarat pacer volunteered to bowl when he saw the ball had gotten old.

Till the 61st over, England were coasting along at 141-2, but Bumrah took the ball and after spinner Ravindra Jadeja had dismissed Haseeb Hameed, the right-arm pace bowler ran through the middle-order, picking the wickets of Ollie Pope and Jonny Bairstow.

"Absolutely unbelievable spell. If you give 27 runs off 22 overs on this kind of a pitch, I think that is a huge effort in the last innings of a Test match. You know as soon as the ball started reversing [reverse swinging] a bit, Jasprit said: ‘Give me that ball' and he bowled that six-over spell and got us two breakthroughs that completely shifted the momentum to our side and from thereon, we knew any more mistakes from England and we will be all over this game," Kohli said after India's 157-run win in the fourth Test.

‘Top three bowling show'

He termed it as one of the three best bowling performances he has witnessed. "I am really proud of the character that the team has shown, especially this morning. Definitely, among the top three bowling performances that I have witnessed as Indian captain," said Kohli during the presentation ceremony.

England captain Joe Root lauded Bumrah's ability to reverse swing. "Credit to India, they got the ball to reverse. I thought Bumrah's spell was the real turning point of the game," said Root.

Root impressed

"He's [Bumrah] a superb bowler and at times we need to be realistic and accept that he bowled really well. That was world-class bowling. Have to manage better if we're in a similar situation in the near future, especially our game against reverse swing."

Kohli said that instead of complaining about the flat pitch, they took it as an opportunity and insisted that the team wanted to continue bowling with the old ball.

Lethal with reverse swing

"We exploited reverse swing perfectly and we were actually looking at the opportunity of bowling with the old ball and looked at it as a positive rather than saying ‘look, nothing is happening from the pitch and what are we going to do here?'

"Rather than that, we believed as a team that we could get all 10 wickets today and that is why it happened. Because the boys had belief."

Kohli said that the ‘flat pitch' was actually a blessing in disguise. "The ball got scuffed up quite nicely and then we managed to make one side heavier, and when the ball is reversing enough, they become much more lethal," he said.

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