Beware, England. Jasprit Bumrah has arrived

Jasprit Bumrah's was the loudest voice heard around the Kent County Ground in Beckenham on Saturday. India's premier bowler was brimful of energy as he not just made the ball do things but also engaged in spirited chatter with his team-mates and coaches on a windy, cloudy yet sunny afternoon.

It was the first day at training for India's Test squad, who landed in London on Friday ahead of their five-match series against England, which starts on June 20 in Leeds. And the one player on either side who can tilt results singlehandedly is Bumrah. And he knows it. There is no arrogance in this.

England has been a mostly happy place for Bumrah. In his first Test in the country, in 2018, he bagged a five-for in a comfortable India win at Trent Bridge, which helped them rebound from 2-0 down. Nottingham was also the venue of Bumrah's only other five-for in the country, in the first Test of the 2021 tour; India might have felt they had a slight edge going into the final day, which was rained off.

In the next Test at Lord's, in one of India's most memorable Test wins, Bumrah stunned England with his… bat, putting on an unbroken 89 for the last wicket with Mohammed Shami before doing his usual thing with the ball including, who can forget, the slower ball to Ollie Robinson, who might still be replaying it in his head.

This is what Bumrah does. He lives forever in the batter's mind. He comes to you in the middle of the night, and jolts you awake. As Usman Khawaja admitted post the 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy: "I was just Bumrah-ed."

What's worse for the batters is that Bumrah doesn't forget. At training on Sunday Bumrah could be heard telling India bowling coach Morne Morkel about his two Trent Bridge five-fors, and about how the Dukes was doing things in swing- and seam-friendly conditions on his first trip in 2018, and how, on his later tours, it became less responsive. But Bumrah has shown he has the ability to take conditions out of the equation. At Beckenham, Kent's second home venue, Bumrah extracted good seam movement and continually tested the outside edge while keeping batters rooted inside the crease with his yorker-length deliveries.

Watching him from 40-50 yards away, from behind his bowling arm, you would have never known this was the same bowler who was forced to stop bowling on the second afternoon of the New Year's Test in Sydney due to what was initially diagnosed as back spasms, but was eventually understood to be a stress reaction in his lower back.

To avoid any further career-threatening injury, the BCCI's medical staff, in coordination with the selectors and team management, have decided Bumrah will need to be handled extremely carefully. So on this England tour, he will not play all five Tests. As much as the experience will be rationed, the experience of watching Bumrah bowl at full tilt, filled with joie de vivre, will be one to treasure.

India, England, and Bumrah himself know that this one-in-a-lifetime bowler could be the most defining factor in this marquee series, soon to be christened the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy. Bumrah is ready for the England summer.