While India’s fast bowling great will be coy to rate himself, England’s Fred Trueman was never hesitant to state that he was the greatest
India’s Jasprit Bumrah during the Melbourne Test of the 2024-25 series (inset) England great Fred Trueman. PICS/GETTY IMAGES
Jasprit Bumrah has been called, by one pundit, the Don Bradman of fast bowling. It went viral. There are long-serving cricketers like Stuart Broad who believe that Bumrah is indeed the greatest ever.
No one can fall into the ‘all-time great’ category without being a mighty force in Test cricket. So, let’s talk Test cricket even at a time when we are still savouring India’s T20 World Cup capture.
The 300-Test wicket club once symbolised fast bowling greatness. Bumrah hasn’t reached 300 wickets. He is still 66 away after playing 52 Tests, but his average is 19.79 — the best among all Test bowlers who have claimed 200 or more Test wickets. His economy rate of 2.77 may not be the best in that lot, but is very impressive all the same. His strike-rate is 42.86, third to only Kagiso Rabada (39.51) and Dale Steyn (42.38).
While talk about Bumrah being on top of the pile across all formats will carry on, it’s highly unlikely that the player himself will come out and say he is the greatest. The one fast bowler who pulled off the cloak of modesty vigorously and swiftly was England’s Fred Trueman. Mind you, even Dennis Lillee, rated by many as the greatest ever fast bowler for conquering stress fractures in his back to end his career with a record 355 wickets, didn’t indulge in self-praise.
Fiery Fred or FS had no doubt in his mind that he was the greatest. In 1964, the Yorkshireman became the first man to claim 300 Test wickets. No one scaled the peak of that magnitude till West Indies spinner Lance Gibbs reached there in 1975-76 and went past Trueman’s 307 wickets. Lillee, Bob Willis, Ian Botham, Richard Hadlee, Imran Khan, Kapil Dev, and Malcolm Marshall joined the list in the 1980s, before the band of highest wicket-takers got somewhat crowded with other great bowlers trooping in.
Trueman delighted cricket writers, readers and listeners (he became a commentator in the 1970s) with his boastful utterances. Probably the most famous of those was his suggestion to his biographer John Arlott on what the title of his book should be. “T’Greatest Fast Bowler Who Ever Drew Breath” is what Trueman is believed to have suggested. Ultimately, it was merely Fred — Portrait of a Fast Bowler by John Arlott.
Trueman was justifiably accused of blowing his own horn, but at times he was right in giving it back when he was being lectured. Gubby Allen, the fast bowler who was part of the 1932-33 Bodyline series in Australia, came up to Trueman and asked why he needed such a long run-up. I reproduce the conversation as revealed by Trueman in his book, Ball of Fire: “He [Allen] came up to me and asked why I took such a long run-up. He said that when he was bowling for England he only took half my run-up but was equally as quick as me. So I told him I’d studied Test match records and curiously he didn’t seem to figure much. And my name was among the four fastest bowlers of the century — where was his? At that he seemed to become upset and said: ‘We can’t tell you youngsters anything.’ I replied: ‘That’s not true, but you certainly can’t tell me anything about fast bowling.’”
Trueman used humour to remind people of how great he was. During the evening of his life he was once reminded about a certain player who played against him in 1952. To paraphrase, he said something like, “He was not at the crease long enough to remember him.”
Dickie Bird, the umpire who passed away last year, once told an audience how Trueman (who he played with at Yorkshire), would at times not walk out with his team. He’d be at the gate, waiting for the opposition opening batsmen to walk out from there so that he could tell them that there was no need to shut the gate as they would return soon with him opening the bowling.
One of the earliest books I laid my hands on was former England fast bowling great Alec Bedser’s 1981 book called Cricket Choice. In it, he analysed batsmen and bowlers of each Test playing team. He started the section of bowlers by mentioning Ray Lindwall, his Australian adversary. Bedser wrote, “Lindwall elevated fast bowling to a rare, brilliant and exact science.”
Can the same be said about Bumrah I wondered on Wednesday and checked with performance analyst Devraj Raut, who has worked with India ‘A’. Raut agreed vehemently that Bedser’s view can be attached to Bumrah as well and added: “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. Bumrah is the talent who works hard, too.”
Is Bumrah the Don Bradman of fast bowling? Who will answer that considering no one who has observed both Bradman and Bumrah closely is living. So, let’s savour Bumrah as he is and hope he will play far more Tests than his current count of 52, which incidentally is the same number of Tests Bradman figured in.
mid-day’s Deputy Editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance.
He tweets @ClaytonMurzello. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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