Finally India’s wait for an ICC title comes to an end with India winning the T20 World Cup 2024 Edition. The contest was a nail biting one; at least towards the end it definitely became a game that would require some nerves to even watch the game let alone play it.

Also read: T20 World Cup Final! An outstanding treat for the audience

Ever since India won the trophy, the hashtags trending on twitter reveal a lot about Indians, their mindset about cricket, there understanding of cricket as well as the strong PR influencing Indian Cricket.

Every time I visit twitter(X), I see #ViratKohli, #RoKo, #HardikPandya, #SuryakumarYadav, #Arshdeep, #RavindraJadeja and many more around players who didn’t even play the final: #MSDhoni, #Siraj etc. etc.

Can you guess who was missing?

Jasprit Bumrah!

the one player who actually deserves to be celebrated. He gifted India this world cup; if not for his impeccable, precise and accurate bowling, we had lost the game, in fact we wouldn’t be in the finals in the first place. Even in this game the only bowler bowling wicket taking delivers was him, other bowlers were bowling to just not getting slogged for a boundary i.e. bowling wide enough outside off stump that can’t be called wide but is far from the batsman so is relatively difficult to slog over mid on.

This isn’t just about a hashtag trend, India and Indians have forever underplayed fast bowlers and haven’t given what the quality bowlers like Jasprit Bumrah deserve. Mediocre players in the name of representatives of a particular caste or religion or a sect are praised out of proportion to be politically correct but the players who actually deserve to be praised are left out.

Also read: The (in)significant fans

How much does a world class bowler like Jasprit Bumrah makes out of endorsements in comparison to Indian elite batsmen or other popular players? Both Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli charge twice the amount that Jasprit Bumrah charges for an advertisement. Jasprit Bumrah’s total net worth is less than what these batsmen make in one year. Even Hardik Pandya’s net worth is more than his. You can even look at the IPL auctions. Jasprit Bumrah’s highest ever was 12 Cr (that too only in IPL 2024 and 2023 before it was 1.5 Cr), where as Virat Kohli’s highest was 17 Cr, Rohit Sharma’s was 16 Cr and Hardik Pandya’s 15 Cr.

This matters!

Professional cricket is not just sport, it is business too and of course bread and butter for professional cricketers. Who is more like to stay in the playing XI? The one who generates more revenue for the companies or the one who plays excellent? Also, why would you put your blood and sweat in difficult and strenuous bowling sessions day in and day out when you can make more money by just creating an awesome PR? Probably that’s why we don’t have many world class bowlers in Indian squad. Many is a little too many I guess. Can you think of other world class wicket taking bowler that can be relied on?

Arshdeep Singh being extremely honest after the match which I really appreciate and is quite rare to see these days said “I get wickets because Jassi bhai creates so much pressure from the other end that batsman try to hit hard the bowler at the other end and end up throwing their wickets”.

Also read: Everything is not fine with team India; ICC cricket world cup 2023

Jasprit Bumrah got Reeza Hendricks clean bowled on a brilliant outswinger that is literally one of the most difficult deliveries to bat, some players might also call it an unplayable delivery, the exact same delivery for Marco Jansen. It was pure merit and excellence from the bowler and not a lose shot or a mistake from the batsmen. Hardik Pandya bowled a juicy low full toss which by any yardstick was a poor delivery but ended up in a wicket because of an exceptional stunt pulled off on the boundary by SuryaKumar Yadav. If you be humble and honest, you might even call it luck! The other dozen titles that India lost, the team wasn’t this lucky!

As a matter of fact knowing that the pitch was flat and had not much for the spinners, Rohit Sharma couldn’t do much. Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav were thrashed to the bones, but yet, the captain had to keep them on. Only when Axar Patel was hit for 25 runs in an over, the spinners were removed from the bowling attack. The captain had no choice, who else could have bowled wicket taking deliveries? We have seen this situation where the captain runs out of quality bowlers in literally every ICC knockout games.

Also read: This is why Rohit Sharma is different!

Two weeks or maybe even lesser from now, a lot of people will forget what exactly happened during the day but will remember the statistics, Bumrah and Arshdeep got two wickets each and Hardik Pandya got three, he is indeed a brilliant allrounder and delivered leading to India’s victory. No, it wasn’t him, in fact he was the weak-link and the captain couldn’t even bring him early on, but the stats won’t show that. That’s exactly what happened to Bhuvneshwar Kumar, another brilliant bowler who we don’t see playing for India anymore. Yeah, of course it was injury – a kind of injury that lets him play for IPL but not for India.

The cricket enthusiasts, the millions of viewers, the hobby cricketers in India have to make sure they view cricket as a sport isolated from the Politics, religion, caste, PR, trolls, and everything that is not cricket. If we fail to do that, we will end up like Pakistan where a cricketer is in the team only because he offered Namaz on the pitch. Probably that’s why they lost to us even when we tried our best to not win on June the 9th when India played against them in the group stage.

Also read: The politics of India vs Pakistan Cricket

If we don’t start looking at cricket from a cricketing point of view, we will never be able to surpass Australia. Australia has won six ODI World cups where Cricket is not even the most popular sport, where as India has won only two here Cricket is religion. Australian Cricket team has eleven cricket players, they don’t have gods playing, or stars playing; these players even carry their own luggage from the airport after winning a world cup title. Of course we can feel content after defeating Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc.

Oh yeah, every time we lose we can always say “it’s a game of chance, luck wasn’t on our side today, or it was a bad day“. Will we dare to say that we won T20 World Cup 2024 by chance because we got lucky? Or we could just wait for another decade or so when we get lucky to win another ICC title.

Thanks for reading!

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