The Bumrah Full Toss
Imagine a bowler who bowls 10% of his deliveries as full tosses. As a batter you’ll get a full toss every ten balls. 2 or 3 guaranteed sixes off that bowler in every T20 match. Who wouldn’t want to face such a Santa Claus of a bowler who keeps delivering gifts?
Let’s keep that aside for a moment and now imagine seeing this on your TV screen:
Unreal isn’t it? Now you might think the bowler described in the first paragraph is the same guy in the picture above as this article is indeed about Bumrah. If that was your guess, haha I tricked you. It isn’t Bumrah, it’s Rasikh Salam.
But I’ll admit I tricked you for the sake of it because Bumrah isn’t far off. In fact he has bowled the second highest percentage of full tosses in the last three seasons of the IPL. He has bowled a whopping 63 full tosses (third highest for any bowler in the last three seasons) despite missing an entire season.
But as you may already know he has a remarkably low economy rate on his full tosses. The non-extras economy rate of Bumrah’s full tosses is just 5.74 despite the huge sample size.
Throughout this article, we will only use the non-extras economy rate of full tosses. Henceforth, any mention of economy rate will specifically denote the runs scored off the bat per over.
“Yeah yeah, we know. It’s because of the insane lift he gets, right?”
While the lift plays a role it can’t be the sole reason.
For people who are unfamiliar with the concept of lift, here’s an excerpt from my previous article:
“The natural vertical acceleration due to gravity is -9.8 m/s2 (the negative sign indicates downward acceleration). When backspin is imparted, it creates an upward force that counteracts some of this downward acceleration. This slows down the downward acceleration and that’s what causes the ball to land fuller.”
It’s now well known that Bumrah’s wrist snap helps him impart a large backspin resulting in a higher lift. Bumrah gets an average vertical acceleration of -5.87 m/s2 on his full tosses, which is the third highest among seamers who have bowled at least 10 full tosses in the IPL since 2022.
But a higher lift doesn’t guarantee a lower economy rate. After all, it’s still a full toss. The economy rate for full tosses bowled with a vertical acceleration below -6 m/s2 is 12.45. If it’s above -6 m/s2, the economy drops to 10.5.
A difference of just 2 RPO isn’t what we see for Bumrah’s full tosses. So a higher lift alone can’t be the only magic behind Bumrah’s full tosses.
Another commonly cited reason is his delayed release point which implies that the ball has to travel a shorter distance and consequently loses less pace before reaching the batter. This can be quantified using the reaction time to crease.
Another contributing factor to the reduced reaction time is the pace at which Bumrah bowls his full tosses. Since 2022, only 4 of Bumrah’s 63 full tosses in the IPL were delivered at a pace of <135 kph.
The delayed release point also explains why Bumrah’s full tosses have a reduced reaction time despite bowling at a lower speed compared to bowlers like Pathirana and Nortje.
Now remember, a lift of below -6 m/s2 didn’t have a significant effect on the economy rate of full tosses. Now if we combine that with a pace of >140 kph and a reaction time of < 0.49 seconds, the economy rate drops further to 8.42. You see where this is going, right?
*****
Four - That’s how many wickets Bumrah has picked up off his 63 full tosses in the IPL since 2022. Three of those wickets (Hetmyer, Porel, du Plessis) follow a similar pattern - batters trying to put away full tosses but failing to get enough elevation and distance. In a traditional sense, they were unable to get under the ball.
Of course, we can’t attribute all these wickets solely to Bumrah’s magic. There were batting errors as well but batters not being able to get under the ball is one common characteristic of Bumrah’s full tosses.
Obviously, the lift and the high pace play a role but there’s another factor at play - Bumrah bowls a lot of low full tosses which are often said to be as difficult to score off as yorkers. If we consider the average height from the ground when the ball passes parallel to the crease, Bumrah has bowled the second lowest full tosses in the IPL since 2022.
You know what we are gonna do next. Adding another filter for the ball height at the crease being below 40 centimetres, in addition to the previous filters, further reduces the economy rate of full tosses to 7.09.
By the way, we have only covered three of Bumrah’s four wickets off full tosses. What about the fourth? Well, it’s a sad-looking dismissal of Washington Sundar completely missing a full toss and getting cleaned up.
“Who gets bowled on a full toss?” you’d ask but this ain’t no ordinary full toss. He was certainly deceived by the lift as we could clearly see the batter misjudging the trajectory and swinging his bat below the ball. Of course, the lift caused the ball to hit the stumps higher but let’s not overlook one super-obvious thing that led to the dismissal - the ball was directed at the stumps.
The beehive above not only shows how low Bumrah’s full tosses are but also shows that he’s always at the stumps. And this indeed is the final piece of the Bumrah full toss puzzle. When we further filter the full tosses derived earlier, considering only deliveries within 35 centimetres either side of the middle stump line (when ball passes parallel to the crease), the economy rate drops down to an unbelievable 5.88.
A full toss that exhibits all the attributes discussed above is essentially the 'perfect full toss' (for convenience, we'll refer to it as such from now on), which every bowler wants to bowl to avoid punishment even when they miss their length.
And we are already in Bumrah territory. Since 2022, there have been 48 perfect full tosses in the IPL and Bumrah has bowled 41.67% of them despite missing an entire season. Cummins and Nortje, tied for second place, have only managed 8.33% each. They have managed to bowl only 4 perfect full tosses each while Bumrah has bowled 20 such balls in the same time period.
The perfect full toss accounts for 31.75% of Bumrah’s full tosses and it should be quite obvious that the remaining deliveries share similar attributes, with slight variations in one or two attributes that just miss the cutoff we used in our analysis.
Bumrah’s full tosses are akin to a perfectly prepared dish with each added ingredient enhancing the taste further. Bumrah combines various attributes that each slightly improves the economy rate of a full toss and delivers a killer full toss that produces an unbelievable economy drop. If you are a batter facing Bumrah and you wish he errs and bowls a full toss so that you can score off him, think again. You are not going to get a regular full toss that you can hit for a six but a full toss that won’t even let you score six in an over. It’s the perfect full toss. It’s the Bumrah full toss.