Bumrah uses money in the bank for Lord's honours

Jasprit Bumrah's favourite phrase is "money in the bank". Not sure he follows professional wrestling, but in WWE, Money In the Bank is a briefcase that contains a contract entitling the holder to a title shot anytime, anywhere. So the champion could have just survived an hour-long Iron Man and you could cash in at that moment and beat him.

Bumrah walks around with the air of a man carrying an invisible briefcase that guarantees wickets anytime, anywhere. Or he has the air of a man who knows he is a genius fast bowler.

In Bumrah's world, money in the bank is days when he bowls well without results. He believes the results will show up sooner or later. Unlike Money In The Bank in WWE, which can be cashed in anytime, money in the bank in cricket depends on various elements not in a bowler's control: luck, batter's intent and conditions, to name a few.

Bumrah respects the occasional disconnect between effort and outcomes in cricket and bides his time. He hardly goes searching because he believes he deserves more wickets in a certain spell or on a certain day. He doesn't risk releasing pressure and ruining it for the bowlers who follow.

Bumrah's body, though, is beginning to test his patience. There is this whole unfortunate scenario in the aftermath of his back stress reaction at the start of the year. He is playing only three of the five Tests in this series. There has been too much focus on "will he, won't he". It is not the kind of attention he wants.

Bumrah has not been pleased with all of it. His demeanour has been a little testy, only a little. There have been suggestions he wanted to play at Lord's, and so did not play at Edgbaston despite India trailing 0-1 in the series and having more than a week off before that Test. The matches he plays and misses is not his call alone but that of the team in discussion with him.

As India won without Bumrah at Edgbaston, two curious but eventually shallow bits of stats did the rounds: Mohammed Siraj's bowling average falls from 33 to 26 in his absence, India's win percentage goes up from 40 to 70.

It is in this context that the first day of money in the bank at Lord's becomes a little curious. Bumrah started it by drawing an edge with the first ball he bowled to Ben Duckett only to see it not carry. He swung the ball bewitchingly late, paired it with nip off the pitch, and made a few batters look incredibly silly. He induced a false shot once every three deliveries, sprayed the ball a little on a few occasions, and ended with just one wicket in 18 overs. You wondered if he took this day with the same equanimity and considered it more money in the bank.

A teaser of what was to follow was seen late on day one when Bumrah went for the mightiest of tricks in fast bowling: swing one way, seam the other way, and hit the top of off. It is arguable whether it is physically possible for batters to react to this kind of movement. Mostly they hope the ball misses the stumps. The beauty of that Harry Brook dismissal was that Bumrah had tried each end without luck. He then went back to the end with lower bouncer, and bowled the exact length needed to hit top of off, which had shortened by a metre since the first session. That is the extent of how soft the balls are going.

On the second morning, Bumrah repeated the trick twice from the bouncier Nursery End with the second new ball. He made the length adjustment again. To Ben Stokes he went slightly closer on the release from around the wicket. To Joe Root, he swung the ball away a lot, pitched it up, then found seam movement against that angle; it would have just missed off but the inside edge took it on to uproot middle stump.

With three swipes of genius, he ripped out the heart of England's batting. Then came the ball change, which resulted in a quiet period with the replacement ball. He came back after lunch, went closer on the release to Jofra Archer, got away swing and then seam back in, and hit the stumps three-fourths of the way up.

Patient as Bumrah is, this five-for - his 15th in 47 Tests - had a bit of "I'm cashing in" than relying on circumstances to change while he keeps bowling good length and line. He still hit the good length with 54% of his deliveries but went into the 6-7 metre band 30% of the time, which is slightly high for him. Perhaps he was just a little impatient. Perhaps he wanted to hit the stumps more often: eight times in 18 overs on day one to seven times in nine overs on day two.

The attention will remain on Bumrah. Whatever the result at Lord's, as the fourth Test in Manchester approaches, people will start asking which of the remaining matches he will play. And if it is 2-2 after Old Trafford, and he's already played three Tests, there will be questions about whether he should push himself and play the finale. There is no way around it. The good thing is, Bumrah still has plenty of money in the bank, and not the WWE version, which you lose when you cash it in for a title shot.