Tendulkar slams Bumrah trolls: ‘just a coincidence that India won Tests he didn’t play’

[u/5missedcallsfromBCCI]

https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/tendulkar-slams-bumrah-trolls-just-a-coincidence-that-india-won-tests-he-didnt-play-10172846/

[u/spongey1865]

It's such a weird phenomenon. But sometimes something that seems like a pattern has no meaning. Bumrah is clearly awesome and in the future India will be more likely to win when he plays than when he doesn't.

It's a bit like India losing 15 tosses in a row. Sometimes statistical weirdness happens and there's no rhyme or reason to it.

[u/causaloptimist → u/spongey1865]

I think in this case there may be an actual explanation. I think Bumrah is just so good that the rest of the bowling unit and even some of the batting unit subconsciously doesn’t step up as much as they can. Siraj’s famous line “I only believe in Jassi bhai” captures the phenomenon. A similar thing happened at Gabba where the entire team was forced to step up due to key players sitting out.

[u/svjersey → u/causaloptimist]

I would love to (if I had the time) assess how Indian captains are assigning spells / ends to Bumrah vs other bowlers, and what role they are asking those bowlers to play.

For instance, are our captains just relying on Bumrah to break all partnerships and asking other bowlers to play a containing role. Because then on a net basis, it is counterproductive.

Another lens could be that Bumrah plays the games that are likely to be harder, and so we lose them more.. hard to assess that..

[u/g0_west → u/svjersey]

If I was a captain I'd ask Bumrah to play a containing role and trust him to strike when the iron is hot rather than asking him to go for wickets every over. Let him build pressure, he's good enough that batters can't score off him easily and especially against sides like England, if they go for a maiden every other over, they're more likely to play rash shots against the 2nd bowler to try get some movement on the scoreboard