5 Best Death Overs Specialist Bowlers to be seen at the 2016 T20 World Cup

Excitement is at a sky-high for the World T20 which is to be flagged off with the India-New Zealand match at Nagpur on Tuesday. However, the downside of excitement is that it can often throw rational thinking into disorder, an inherent danger of the T20 format – where the winner is often whose nerves are of the stronger steel.A vital part of the artillery required to win T20 matches is the bowler who can be called upon to bowl the closing overs of the batting innings, when batsmen usually throw caution to the wind and attempt to heave everything coming to their way out of the stadium.The qualities required to perfect this trade are intuition (to know what the batsman will do), intelligence (to counter what the batsman will do), and the coldest professional head (to shut out all the noise and the significance of the moment) – not to mention a wide variety of deliveries at disposal.If any bowler is to turn out to be a matchwinner in these upcoming T20 matches, with whose performance the memories of this tournament will be interminably linked in years to come, it is likely to be one of these ‘merchants of death’:

#1 Jasprit Bumrah

Jasprit Bumrah has been one of the brightest finds for the Indian cricket team in recent times, and one of the best fast bowlers to have emerged in the international arena recently. Bumrah has been learning the art of death bowling at Mumbai Indians, bowling alongside Lasith Malinga, but his breakthrough for the Indian team has been even more sensational than he would have expected.

Bumrah has played all of the 11 T20s India have played this year, having picked up 15 wickets at a marvellous economy rate of 6.15 – his statistics being good enough to put him ahead of Mohammed Shami in the pecking order.

Captain MS Dhoni has increasingly relied on the Gujarat youngster to bowl in the final overs, while relying on Ashish Nehra in the initial overs. In his breakthrough series in Australia earlier this year, Bumrah had picked 5 of his 6 wickets in the last 4 overs of matches.

Bumrah’s unorthodox action, his yorkers which dip very late and his inscrutable slower balls are all elements which batsmen in aggressive mode find hard to deal with. Bumrah bowled 10 yorkers in the Australia-India T20I series, conceding four runs and taking two wickets.

If the World T20 title is to be decided in the last over a match and some Indian bowler is called upon to do the job which Joginder Sharma had done in 2007, there is a high chance that this task will be given to the 22-year-old Bumrah.