It’s not even been five months since Gurnoor Brar made his ODI debut. The fact that he is being already touted as a strong possibility to make up the Indian fast bowling wheel at the ODI World Cup in the Africas in 11 months’ time is indicative of the strides he has made in his limited time in the country’s colours.

The height advantage

Brar, a strapping 26-year-old from Punjab’s historical city of Muktsar, is one of those rare commodities in Indian cricket — an out-and-out fast bowler. It’s not as if he doesn’t have other skills, but his USP clearly is his pace and height (6 feet 5 inches), which together combine to not just give him a high release point and therefore the propensity to extract disconcerting bounce from a fuller than normal length, but also hustle and harry batters with speeds that repeatedly are in the early 140kmph bracket.