Umran Malik's thunderbolts reverberate across the globe

Close your eyes and visualize this setting: a tight white-ball game is underway in the UAE and is taking place on one of those notoriously sluggish surfaces in the Gulf nation. The ball is not coming onto the bat, meaning that the willow is only yielding scuffed noises as the leather makes its mark.

Then, all of a sudden, you hear a youngster whistling with the wind, thudding the ball into the track and of course, the crack of the ball hitting the bat. You quickly open your eyes to decipher the phenomenon on display. Not just because of the stark difference to what was happening before but also because this new gimmick – of the ball clattering into the bat, seemed unimaginable on an abrasive and drab pitch.

Your eyes quickly gaze upon a youngster marking out his run-up close to the 30-yard circle. He is wearing the orange of the Sunrisers Hyderabad and seems a kid whose wildest fantasies have somehow come to fruition. He glides to the crease like a gazelle, loads up excellently, braces his front leg and then sends down a thunderbolt.

The ball, mind you, whizzes through at more than 150 km/hr and immediately hurries whichever batter is at the other end. You rub your eyes against each other because for a brief moment, there is a bit of Waqar Younis about this lad. Obviously not in terms of talent and pedigree (at least for now) but because there is an uncanny resemblance. The commentators on air confer too.

You rummage through the player’s profile, even wondering if he is an overseas pro who has been plucked from one of the numerous T20 leagues on the planet. But he isn’t. He’s an Indian fast bowler and goes by the name of Umran Malik.

Till a week ago, not many had heard about Umran Malik. He had played a grand total of 1 T20 and 1 List A game, with him, rather astonishingly, conceding 98 runs (off 10 overs) in the latter. Now, though, you know there is a special talent at SRH’s disposal and that the IPL has, like countless times before, provided the platform for another one of those fairy tales.

Not just because there haven’t been many Indians who have consistently clocked speeds in excess of 150 km/hr but also because a lot of Umran Malik’s bowling looks natural. So much so that there is plenty of talent waiting to be nurtured.

Technically speaking, Umran Malik’s action (at least at this juncture) seems easily repeatable. He generates immense momentum through his lower body in his run-up and then doesn’t fall away, meaning that the entire head of steam gets transferred onto his release.

He also has a braced front leg – something that amplifies the momentum he has garnered during his run-up and allows him to whip the ball into areas where batters aren’t very comfortable.

Umran Malik has clocked speeds in excess of 150 km/hr

More importantly, though, Umran Malik seems to boast the rare gift of hurrying batters, irrespective of their caliber. Against the Royal Challengers Bangalore, Devdutt Padikkal – an active international cricketer, struggled to come to grips with his pace, whereas Glenn Maxwell also looked highly circumspect.

Umran Malik has a braced front leg at the point of delivery (Pic Credits: India Today)

AB de Villiers, too, didn’t look very comfortable when batting against him. And, though the South African played just a solitary delivery, it was quite revealing that Umran Malik was able to hustle the maestro. Remember, de Villiers doesn’t seem in a state of frenzy very often. This young lad did it.

The most telling bit, however, was that he was able to give such a brisk account of himself in conditions that shouldn’t have suited his style of bowling. On a pitch where the norm was to bowl slow, slower and slowest, Umran Malik kept hassling the batters by bowling quick, quicker and obviously the quickest.

In fact, there were several occasions where the ball hit the bat, rather than the other way round – something that is considered the highest accolade for any tearaway fast bowler. The last time India thought they had found someone who hit the bat harder than most batters expected was perhaps when they unearthed Jasprit Bumrah.

Additionally, Umran Malik seems to be a fierce competitor – someone who doesn’t want to shirk his responsibility and wants to meet fire with fire. It also indicates his mental toughness, considering how he has handled his meteoric rise from relative cricketing obscurity to the razmataz of the IPL.

Moreover, Umran Malik seems to have a decent understanding of how to best utilize the seam. While in T20 cricket, that particular trait doesn’t get highlighted, his ability to hold down the seam and then deliver it without too many wobbles is a characteristic worth the investment.

It might, however, be a touch premature to jump the gun on Umran Malik and suggest that he is ready for international cricket or a full season of the IPL. Or, that he can be as good as Bumrah. The key point, however, is that the Indian cricketing fraternity understands that there is enough potential to be harnessed.

There is something about this bustling lad – something that forces you to want to look at him and from an Indian perspective, hope that these early sparks morph into more tangible flames.

Having said that, it is also imperative that the ideal support system is evolved to allow Umran Malik to develop to the best of his abilities. At this juncture, he is a raw fast bowler who has taken the world by storm.

But there will be a time in the near future when batters will be prepared for the kind of pace Umran Malik brings to the fore and will have better plans to tackle him. At that point, it would be vital for Umran Malik to have the right guidance to ensure that he doesn’t lose his USP and that he devises methods to outwit the batters – methods that aren’t solely reliant on searing pace.

The Indian cricketing community will also have to be extra careful to ensure that Umran Malik doesn’t get stuck in an injury rut. Though the initial signs are that Umran Malik is a naturally-gifted athlete, that notion doesn’t take long to change, especially when putting your body through the grind of fast bowling.

All caveats aside, it is fair to say that Umran Malik has captured the imagination and reiterated that there is nothing quite like raw pace. Or, to be more specific, nothing that gets the adrenaline rushing quite like raw pace.

Usually, when you are asked to close your eyes and visualize what might be transpiring just by feeling the vibes and hearing the sounds, you would, more often than not, form a relatively vivid picture, with the eyes having not played a deceptive role.

From that perspective then, if people did mistake Umran Malik for Waqar Younis, even for a brief moment, it must mean that the Indian youngster was doing something right. Or, in simpler terms, that Umran Malik might just be special.

Perhaps, Umran Malik is living life in the fast lane then, like so many others but somehow, a little differently too. And, of course, ensured that his thunderbolts reverberate across the globe!