Jasprit Bumrah Compared To Sir Don Bradman, Adam Gilchrist's Big 'Fear' Admission

Mumbai Indians and India pacer Jasprit Bumrah is in a league of his own. The speedster is quickly making gains in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 top wicket-takers’ charts, while also turning the season around for MI since his return to the T20 league. Bumrah missed the first few matches of the franchise, but since his return, not much has gone wrong for the Hardik Pandya-led side. In fact, MI have won 6 of the last 7 matches that Bumrah has been a part of.

The consistency with which Bumrah bowls terrifies every single opponent. His talent, coupled with the approach towards the game, truly makes him an elite athlete, that arguably no one can match in the game at present. This is the reason Australian cricket great Adam Gilchrist decided to draw comparisons between Bumrah and the GOAT Sir Donald Bradman.

“He’s maybe the best bowler, fast bowler of all time. When you start stacking up the statistics and the varying conditions that he has to go out and execute those skills in, I guess you look at Sir Donald Bradman’s numbers compared to his peers and he’s just so far ahead, so I think Bumrah is sort of in that category across all the different variations that you get in conditions and pitches that you’ve got to bowl on. He’s significantly further ahead than the peers around him, so that tells you we are truly watching greatness,” Gilchrist said during a discussion on Cricbuzz.

Gilchrist was even asked if the Australians were ever intimidated by an Indian pacer in the past, the way they were in the 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy. His answer was a clear no.

“A seamer from India, consistently throughout, particularly the series that we just saw in the summer, back home in the Australian summer, no, I don’t think so,” Gilchrist said when he was asked whether Australians were intimidated and afraid of a bowler from India like they were against Jasprit Bumrah.

Former India spinner Murali Kartik, who was also a part of the panel discussion on Thursday, called Bumrah a ‘national treasure’ for the country.

“He’s a national treasure, I think at the moment for us a lot, whoever follows cricket and wants India to do well, during the BGT, I think all of us were wishing that he could bowl from both ends. India looked a different side and he looked a different bowler against Australia, he is, look, one of the things which I felt with Bumrah over the period of time is that he acclimatises to any pitch very quickly and I think many bowlers have a certain length that they bowl, but he doesn’t have a certain length, he bowls the length which is required on that surface and that’s his greatness, the oddity of his action,” he said.