India are nine down, the last pair are in, and Stuart Broad knows exactly what he wants to do. Bounce them. Jasprit Bumrah is in and Bumrah can’t bat, not really. You can count his career average on your fingers. He’s only made one fifty in 12 years of cricket, and after four years in the Test side he has a top score of 34. That was at Lord’s last summer, in the second Test of this same stretched-out series. England tried to bump him in that innings, too, in revenge for the way he had bowled at Jimmy Anderson. It didn’t work. But Broad hadn’t played in that match. Maybe it would have been different if he had. So yes, bounce him.
A day earlier, Bumrah walked out for the toss. This is the first time he has captained India. He is their 36th Test captain and, as Mark Butcher says in their pre-match chat, the first fast bowler. “Well,” Bumrah says, “it has happened before, when Kapil Dev was the captain.” But Dev was an all-rounder, Butcher says. “All right, all-rounder, if you say so,” Bumrah replies. No one’s ever going to say that about him.
