It is literally the oldest trick in the book. After all, the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist.
Convincing an adversary of falling for something that is not there is a killer app in all sorts of sports – whether it is the the pump fake in basketball to send the defender the wrong way, or a drop shot out of nowhere in tennis that catches the opponent completely off guard, or the change up pitch in baseball that has the batter swinging at thin air miles away from where the ball is. Or take the case of the slower ball in cricket. It warps the mind of the batter, used to ball arriving at them in a fraction of a second after it leaves a fast bowler’s hand, which now has to wait a fraction of a fraction longer, leaving muscle memory feeling more disoriented than Guy Pearce in Memento. But what sounds simple in theory requires immense skill in execution; the adversary should have very little or no clue that it is coming. In other words, one has to pull off the immaculate deception. To do that, you first have to convince the batter of what is there, and then when they are least expecting it, pull the rug from underneath their feet. Jasprit Bumrah is that magician who has shown that he can do this with a canny ability to disguise the deception each time. He has done it twice before very famously – he got a well set Shaun Marsh out (Cricinfo comms called it ‘the perfect deception’) at the MCG in 2018 to trigger a first innings collapse and set up an historic win, and he did likewise to Ollie Robinson at Lord’s in 2021 when England looked like they would just about thwart an incredible Indian charge for victory. But a good magician’s great trick never gets old, no matter how many times you see it. We saw it again today at Ahmedabad, Bumrah’s home ground technically, where in the highest of high voltage World Cup clashes, he produced it again, foxing the incredibly in-form Mohammed Rizwan, and snuffed out chances of Pakistan posting an imposing total for the hosts to chase.
The modus operandi was the same. Like a good spy operation, the first thing this deception requires is an elaborate cover story. One that has to be plausible, believable, and realistic. Like how they set a fake film company up in Argo to extract American diplomats and spies out of Iran under the pretext of filming a movie there. He set up Marsh with a series of yorkers that were fast and at the stumps, to Robinson he made it appear as if he is going to pepper him with short deliveries in that 51st over of England’s second innings, and to Rizwan he bowled four deliveries that were his normal speed. The key is to choose when to reveal his hand and to do so without any other discernable signals that something’s about to change. Make it too predictable and the opponent gets wind of it, taking the element of surprise out and rendering the deception worthless, make it too unpredictable, and it risks making the execution ineffective. Bumrah has developed the ability to keep the run up, the action right up to the snap of the wrist the same, but slow the delivery down by 15-20% in terms of its speed. He probably has some sort of tell, but if there is one it has remained a secret, just like the codeword for a super secure spy op.
Shaun Marsh was certainly hoping to go into lunch having kept one last delivery out, and had been lulled into a pattern, where perhaps he let his autopilot muscle memory take over; Robinson probably thought the pitch map was too all over the place for that over for one to come that accurately at his pads, walking the tightrope of that leg stump line, and Rizwan was well into his shot, his body weight pretty much all forward, like a boxer suckered by a feint, and now resigned to the knockout blow. The immaculate deception is complete, the magician shrugs, or leaps in joy, depending on the mood Bumrah is in. And the likes of Marsh, Robinson and Rizwan (and they certainly won’t be the last) are left to ponder the revelation of the true meaning Mark Twain’s classic quip – it ain’t what you don’t know, that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
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