‘Jasprit Bumrah and Harshal Patel Make a Complimenting Pair’ – says Former India Pacer Zaheer Khan
Former fast bowler Zaheer Khan reckoned that Harshal Patel and Jasprit Bumrah can form a lethal bowling pair in the shorter formats. While Bumrah has been weaving magic at the international level since 2016, it’s only been three months since Patel made his debut for the national team.
Zaheer said that Harshal thrives under pressure when batters are looking to go after him. Harshal was the Purple Cap holder in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 and also equaled Dwayne Bravo’s record of most wickets in a single IPL season.
As per Zaheer, the fact that opposition batters may not wish to go after Bumrah works in favour of Harshal. The retired pacer believed that Bumrah’s pin-point accuracy and Harshal’s variations at the death may cause a lot of troubles to the opposition batting unit.
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Jasprit Bumrah and Harshal Patel at the death overs will complement each other: Zaheer Khan
“Bumrah and Harshal will be a complementing pair… purely because when you talk about Bumrah, you talk about that awkward angle and fast yorkers. To add to that, he’s got that beautiful variation of bowling slower ones.
“When you look at Harshal, his success story has been around people looking to attack. When batters are coming hard at him, he feels more comfortable and chances of him taking a wicket are on the higher side,” Zaheer told Cricbuzz
“It will work in his favour when he has someone like Bumrah bowling from the other end. Batters would want to take more chances against Harshal than against Bumrah… and it would work in Harshal’s favour. Bumrah is gonna make it very difficult for batters to score runs freely and that’s gonna give an edge to Harshal to use his variations. I think this pair at the death overs will complement each other,” he added.
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Harshal has been plying his trade in the Indian domestic circuit for quite some time. But it’s only while playing for the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in the 2021 IPL that he was able to make an impact. He also picked up a hat-trick against the Mumbai Indians (MI), the five-time champions of the IPL.
Back in November, Patel made his debut for India in the T20Is against New Zealand. Bumrah, on the other hand, is currently India’s fulcrum in the bowling department across all three formats. He has also been a critical member of the MI team in the IPL since the 2013 edition.