Jasprit Bumrah used slower ones brilliantly at T20 World Cup 2026.
A veteran UAE pacer, Zahoor Khan, has revealed that Jasprit Bumrah learnt a slower ball variation from him during IPL 2020. Bumrah’s off-pace deliveries are again in talks after his terrific bowling show in the T20 World Cup 2026 final against New Zealand.
In a show, Zahoor recalled his time with Mumbai Indians (MI) when IPL was shifted to the UAE due to the Covid-19 outbreak, where he was called to the camp, and Zaheer Khan, MI’s team director then, asked him to show the clip of his bowling from T10. At that time, Zahoor had bowled five consecutive slower balls to Lendl Simmons at the same venue, where the batter couldn’t even touch the ball and was eventually dismissed.
That clip impressed everyone, including Bumrah, who asked the UAE bowler to teach him how to bowl that delivery. After impressing Shane Bond in the nets, Zahoor Khan revealed his trick to the ace pacer Bumrah, teaching him how to grip the ball in the same way as a pace-on delivery but still manage to take the speed off.
It’s not that the Indian speedster didn’t bowl slower ones or didn’t deceive batters before, but this variation was completely different. The speciality of Zahoor Khan’s slower ball was that he didn’t change his grip or arm speed, so the batter assumed it to be an on-pace delivery and was early in their shots, as was the case with Simmons.
Jasprit Bumrah had another fabulous T20 World Cup 2026, where he was the joint-leading wicket-taker, with 14 scalps at 12.43 runs apiece and an economy rate of 6.21. This included his career-best figures of 4/15 in the summit clash.
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A notable feature was his usage of slower balls, which were effective on flat decks in high-scoring encounters as well. Overall, Bumrah bowled around 39.08% off-pace deliveries, which went for only 5.63 runs per over and fetched him 50% of his total wickets in the tournament.
Only Lungi Ngidi (52.20%) bowled a higher % slower balls, but his economy rate (5.78) was still marginally higher than Bumrah. Meanwhile, Marco Jansen was the only bowler to take as many wickets as Bumrah on slower deliveries, followed by USA’s Shadley van Schalkwyk (6).
The Indian pacer removed big batters like Harry Brook, Ryan Rickelton, and Rachin Ravindra with his off-pace deliveries during the tournament. It was indeed a fabulous show of slower-ball mastery by Jasprit Bumrah, who might have some credit to give to Zahoor Khan.
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