Updated 29-May-2024 • Published 08-May-2023
Bumrah the stand-out to lead the World Cup bowling stakes
Bumrah the stand-out to lead the World Cup bowling stakes
It makes no sense that Jasprit Bumrah’s Mumbai Indians finished rock-bottom of the recent IPL standings. Well, it does when you look at their campaign in the round, but not when you consider that Bumrah himself was once again at the absolute zenith of his game, claiming 20 wickets at 16.80 and an economy-rate of 6.48 that no other front-line bowling option could match.
Bumrah is one of the primary reasons why India will start ICC T20 World Cup 2024 as the 5/2 favourites for the title. And unsurprisingly, he is also top of the leading wicket-takers market, at a skinny 6/1.
Pat Cummins, Australia’s 50-over World Cup-winning captain, is 11/1 in the same market, alongside his team-mate Mitchell Starc, whose exploits in the IPL play-offs were instrumental in Kolkata Knight Riders landing the title – not least his ball-of-the-tournament candidate to Abhishek Sharma in the final. With their legspinner Adam Zampa also among the front-runners to be leading wicket-taker, at 12/1, there are plenty reasons why Australia are a good bet (at 7/2 in fact) to recapture the title they last won in 2021.
Perhaps a more inticing bet comes with this year’s defending champions. In particular the returning Jofra Archer, who has been out injured for so long it’s hard to know how he will hold up to the pressures of a big tournament. But he looked robust enough in his England comeback at Edgbaston last week, and he is one of a knot of England bowlers, alongside Chris Jordan, Adil Rashid, Reece Topley and Mark Wood, all priced at 25/1.
In the batting stakes, there’s no getting away from Virat Kohli as the market-leader at 13/2. In an era of T20 batting in which length of innings has begun to give way to speed as the defining factor, his ability to bat through an innings while still pushing along at a decent lick remains unarguable. Likewise, England’s captain, Jos Buttler, at 10/1, is a player on whom so many of his team’s fortunes will lie. If either man goes big, progress to the latter stages will surely follow.