Indian pacer Jasprit Bumrah sat down with former West Indies pacer Ian Bishop and former South African captain Shaun Pollock for an ICC podcast. During the interaction, Bumrah expressed his fondness for either Dukes or Kookaburra over the SG ball used in India.

Bumrah said, “I love bowling with Dukes. It seams and swings, so basically when you have a little bit of help. So it does help as it is difficult to be a fast bowler with grounds getting shorter and wickets flattered.  If the ball does something, it becomes even competition. With no help, you only have few things to play with. So I enjoy bowling most with Dukes ball.”

Bumrah also responded to Bishop’s question about his outswinger. Calling it a gradual process, the Indian international said, “I always want to bring new things. My different action, maybe once or twice people will be surprised, but they will find you out. So you need to improve and keep on evolving.

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“So I had the outswinger but when I came into the international set-up, I wasn’t confident about it, maybe it wasn’t coming out well, maybe the pace, you should have the feel of it. Slowly, you work on it in the nets. In the West Indies, the ball (Dukes with pronounced seam) was helpful, conditions were helpful,” he said.

Bumrah also spoke of his short sprint as he takes just eight steps to load up. Bumrah’s unconventional action is also a topic of debate amongst players. Cricketing greats like Michael Holding have termed it injury prone.

“Basically, I have never been coached a lot. No professional coaching or camps. Till date, everything is self-taught, everything, through TV, videos. There is no proper reason for action. I have never really listened to people who told that action needs to be changed, kept on developing on strengths if I could have self-belief,” he mentioned.

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Bumrah also reveals the secret of his short run-up that still manages to build up a tremendous pace. He said, “Playing in the backyard. My run-up is because of that as we didn’t have so much space. So this (8 steps run-up) is the longest that you could have had, maybe this could have been the case. I have tried longer run-up and nothing changes, speed is still the same so why to run so much.”