The Silent Whisperer of Death

The two sides to Jasprit Bumrah's death bowling menace in the IPL

Bowlers have it a lot, lot tougher now in T20s. What Gayle did back in 2011 as a supernova of the format is now becoming the conventional school of thought around what a bat can do in the game’s shorter format. Batters are now realizing that the only thing stopping themselves from going ballistic was themselves. Teams are getting more and more dispensable with their resources at hand, all of which have caused the bowlers to lose even more say in the game. One aspect of T20 bowling that continues to evolve in its fundamentals is death bowling.

Death bowling, especially in T20 cricket when it’s talked about, is detached to the extent that it becomes a whole new dimension to the way a bowler is viewed. Sandeep Sharma is a great overall T20 bowler, but he’s not a death bowler. Bhuvi is a great T20 bowler, AND a great death bowler. Some narratives stack up with their underlying numbers, others stand opposite to them.

Jasprit Bumrah’s name inevitably comes up whenever we talk about the best T20 bowlers, and for good reason. To truly appreciate what makes him stand out, I took a deep dive into the ball-by-ball data from all completed IPL games since 2022, focusing on death bowling and overall impact. The results reaffirm what many already suspect: Bumrah is not just an exceptional death bowler, but one of the finest all-round T20 bowlers in the game today.

So, what the hell is a good death bowler?

While there are several advanced metrics used to identify the best at the death—impact being the most common—a simpler and effective approach is to look at a bowler’s relative economy and relative average compared to his teammates in the same games.

1. Relative economy: A bowler’s economy as opposed to the economy of his teammates in the same games

2. Relative average: A bowler’s bowling average as opposed to the bowling average of his teammates in the same games

Among bowlers who have delivered at least 10 overs in the death overs, Bumrah emerges as a clear outlier on both fronts. His death over economy stands at an impressive 7.1, while his teammates concede nearly 11.9 runs per over in the same phases. Even more striking, he takes a wicket every 13 runs on average at the death, compared to 24.5 runs per wicket for his teammates.

This combination of tight bowling and consistent wicket-taking at the death clearly sets Bumrah apart. His skill set transcends the death overs too, showing why he’s often regarded as an all-format T20 bowling powerhouse.

It’s also interesting to note that while some spinners like Varun Chakravarty have shown economical death bowling (2.75 runs per over cheaper than teammates), their impact on wickets is not as profound as Bumrah’s. Similarly, while Jofra Archer’s economy is respectable, his high bowling average at the death points to inconsistent returns, especially when compared to Bumrah’s rock-solid performances.

In an ideal world, a bowler’s effectiveness at the death would be consistent across both innings, but Bumrah’s numbers show some variation between the first and second innings—something I explored in detail. Despite that, his overall dominance remains unquestionable.

In sum, the data confirms what fans and analysts have long observed: Jasprit Bumrah isn’t just the best death bowler around — he’s quite likely the best T20 bowler we’ve seen in this format. His combination of control, pace, and wicket-taking ability at the death makes him the gold standard for bowling in the shortest format of the game.

Now in an ideal world, a bowler’s death prowess should mirror across innings. But that’s not quite the case, and most glaringly so with Bumrah. There were some startling differences on show when I broke relative average and economy numbers down between the 1st and 2nd innings for him. In the plot below, the bubble sizes indicate the number of balls bowled, and both the graphs only include bowlers to have bowled a minimum of 8 overs in both the 1st and 2nd innings.

What’s up, Bumrah?

Jasprit Bumrah is an absolute freak of nature, no doubt about it. Across formats, across conditions, against varied batters, he’s proved time and again that he’s the best bowler in the world right now, and unarguably one of the most reliable death bowlers, especially in the bowler graveyard that T20 cricket seemingly is. But if you look a little deeper, something’s off with his numbers split between the first and second innings. Charted below are his numbers in the IPL since 2022:

Through and through, Bumrah’s figures are abysmally good. He has a 1st innings economy of 6.6, which is literally half of what his fellow MI bowlers have clocked since 2022. He also leaks 3 times fewer runs per wicket than them when bowling first.

His run-chase figures, albeit still good, do make me wonder what’s at play here. An economy of 8.5 remains world-class—still a full run better than the rest of MI’s bowlers. But he gets a wicket after every ~38 runs. That’s…quite the gap. Let’s take a deeper look into what causes such massive differences.

First things first is probably the volume. Since 2022, Bumrah has been used a lot more to bowl the death overs in the first innings (~34 overs) than in the second (~13 overs). Over time, these figures will almost certainly improve. Another thing worth looking at are the bats he’s bowled at, but there’s nothing quite inferential there.

Bumrah’s split of deliveries by batting positions

Albeit he’s bowled at batters between 8-11 more in the second innings than the first since 2022, there’s no reason to believe the kind of batters he’s bowled at is the reason for his comparatively weaker performance at the death in run chases. What might be of help now is to look at Bumrah’s split of deliveries to assess his repertoire across innings.

What you will, unquestionably, not see about any other proficient death bowler is the strikingly high % of full tosses bowled by him, at almost 30% of all balls between overs 16-20 in the first innings. For context, 13% of Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s balls at the death are full tosses, 6% of Hazlewood’s, and at a fairly high proportion are Harshal Patel’s, at 19%.

Bumrah’s full toss is a phenomenon in and of itself. It’s intricacies and what makes it so effective were covered in great detail in this blog by Spin Vision. The writer talks about the relatively high lift Bumrah gets on his full tosses because of the backspin and how those, clocked at a fairly high pace shoot at a very pinch interception point for batters making it very hard for batters to make impactful contact with them.

While Bumrah bowls a strikingly high number of full tosses in the first innings, they’re almost perfectly substituted by full length deliveries in its proportion.

Not only has he been bowling more full balls, but their line distributions have varied as well. Since 2022, Bumrah has bowled 40 balls on a full length in the 1st innings and 25% in the 2nd. Almost half of his deliveries them have been pitched outside off-stump at an economy of 13.5. On the corollary, 48% of full-length balls in the 1st innings were pitched in line with the wickets which went at only run-a-ball.

Another fascinating aspect is to look at the way he’s been used across the first and second innings in terms of the overs he’s bowled.

Bumrah’s use at the death

As can be seen above there’s a sizeable difference in the way Bumrah has been used as a death bowler in the 1st and 2nd innings. Nearly 40% of his overs bowled in the first innings have come in the 19th over for him and he’s managed to stay consistently and considerably the league’s average bowling numbers. However, move on to the second innings, and he hasn’t closed the innings since 2022. The chunk of his overs has also been concentrated in the 17th over.

A better and more in-depth view into Bumrah’s death bowling utilization is given by the graph below. I’ve plotted the over sets bowled by Bumrah in the 1st and 2nd innings of the IPL since 2022. An over set simply indicates what overs a bowler has bowled at the death.

When bowling in the first innings, he’s been given the ball to bowl the 17th and 19th overs at death 40% of the time, unarguably the most ‘tone-setting’ overs at the death. If not paired at the 17th and 19th, he’s bowled solely the 19th once every five of those games, with the next most followed over set being the 18th and 20th.

This changes quite a bit when it’s assessed how he’s being made to bowl in the second innings. There, he’s taken charge of only the 17th over 36% of the time, while being equally likely to bowl the pair of 17th & 19th and the 18th over. So, at a fairly granular level, he’s being made to bowl less. While this is probably caused by higher reliance on him to bowl an over or two in the middle overs in a run-chase to get things under control, this leaves the chance for him to not have enough possible resources at hand to be as effective at the death.

Consistency or variation: what works for him?

Furthermore, I wanted to investigate what works for Bumrah, intrinsically. Looking at the distribution of lengths he deploys in an over gets us a sneak peek into how he constructs an over, and there’s a pretty sizeable impact that varying the number of lengths he bowls (or is able to bowl) has on his numbers.

Bumrah bowls 2 lengths an over almost 41% of the time while bowling second, as opposed to just 12% of the time when bowling first. However, he numbers in these instances stand nearly identical, going at ~7 runs per over. The differences become quite stark with 3 and 4 different lengths per over. Bumrah bowled 3 different lengths in 47% of the overs while bowling first but only 29% of them when bowling second, and 4 different lengths in 38% and 18% respectively, managing to maintain a better economy across.

While Bumrah deploys varied numbers of lengths per over depending on whether his team’s bowling first or second, he keeps the spread of those lengths in line (excuse the pun), sort of. A length streak represents how many balls were successively bowled at the same length. A spread of more than 75-80% across both the first and second innings indicates that 80% of the time Bumrah’s next delivery will not be pitched at the same length as his previous one.

There’s also a change in how much Bumrah attacks with his line-length combinations at the death between the 1st and the 2nd innings, albeit a smaller one. While it is a tad bit fallacious to club any particular set of line-length combinations to all be attacking since some would obviously be more than the others, but going by the rule of thumb which dictates balls pitching on the stumps, or bowled at a pinchy good/short of good length and at the body are considered to be aggressive, in that they yield quicker and cheaper wickets.

He attacks 57% of the time in the first innings but 51% in the second, and while his attacking economy is pretty similar across the 2 innings, a wider gaping hole’s apparent when he’s been looser with his line-lengths. He leaks 8.7 runs per over on his non-attacking balls at the death when bowling first, which shoots up to 11 RPO in run chases. He also averages 20.1 and a whopping 76 respectively.

Jasprit Bumrah stands as arguably the greatest bowler the T20 format has ever witnessed, redefining death bowling with his unique skill and consistency. This analysis is not meant to diminish his brilliance but to highlight the nuances that make his mastery all the more remarkable. In a game where every ball counts, Bumrah remains the unyielding architect of pressure—truly a bowler ahead of his time.