Let’s begin with Shaun Marsh, December 27, 2018, facing up to Jasprit Bumrah on a slow Melbourne wicket. Day Three, Boxing Day Test, lunch approaching, the ball’s gone soft. Dreary conditions for a fast bowler.

Bumrah is doing what he can, using speed off the air, clocking in above 140kph most balls, keeping his line tight.

Final ball of the over before lunch. Rohit Sharma walks up to Bumrah from mid-off, says, “why don’t you try a slower ball, like the one you use in one-dayers?”

Bumrah instantly recognises it as a great idea. “Some of those guys play with hard hands, so maybe…maybe the ball will dip, maybe he will lob it to short cover…” he thinks.

Bumrah has not bowled a slower ball through the match but now he does, he shaves off a quarter of the pace. The ball swings in at 113kph, dips at the top of its full length and under the bat from the lack of speed, bangs into Marsh’s ankle in line with the middle stump.

Bumrah, lounging on a sofa in a red full-sleeved T-shirt, blue jeans and a pair of retro, oversized white sneakers, relives the moment and smiles to himself. He’s just come off a practice session at the Mumbai Cricket Association grounds and is days away from making his way back into Team India after spending four months recovering from a back injury.

“I always like to have new things up my sleeve,” he says. “If you’ve got only two or three tricks, then you’re stuck. Some days you go in with a fixed agenda; you think, at the end, I’m just going to bowl yorkers and slower balls. But on that day, if your yorkers are out of place—and your opponents know you will bowl slower balls and are waiting for it—then you need a good bouncer, right? If you’ve got a very good length ball. Or a wide yorker, a wide slower ball…oh! I’ve got so many options!”

Bumrah, the master of the variety show, is a scorching fast bowler with a bag of tricks that’s spilling over. Full up missiles, back-of-the-length nags, slower balls, swinging in, swinging out, off-cutters and leg-cutters, seam up and cross seam, yorkers—always those yorkers—all served up with unnerving accuracy.

His captain Virat Kohli calls him the “most complete bowler in the world”, and it’s hardly an exaggeration.

On that day in Melbourne, Bumrah delivered 15.5 overs, four of those maidens, conceded 33 runs and took six wickets. He got the opener Marcus Harris with a bouncer, setting the batsman up with a perfectly placed field after having hit him twice on the helmet. He got Travis Head after lunch, with a 142kph ball from wide around the crease that swung in late, beat him for pace, and sprayed the stumps up in the air. Tim Paine was caught behind off a classic off-cutter. Nathan Lyon and Josh Hazlewood got yorkers.

“I bowled better than the game in Melbourne, but I was very unlucky,” Bumrah says. “Well, I got five wickets in the game, three and two…but I should have gotten more, the batsman kept on getting beaten.”

Indeed it was a masterclass of control and virtuoso range. Balls flew past edges, angled in or out, moving in or away, nipping across, straightening on unsuspecting batsmen, hitting them on helmets, and generally causing mayhem.

“I told my coach, Bharat Arun sir, I told him that I’m bowling well, it’s all money in the bank and it will all cash in one day, whenever it is, whenever you require it the most,” Bumrah says. “In the next game, the Boxing Day match, where we needed to win the series, it cashed in. We won the match, we won the series. I did nothing different. Some very good deliveries in Perth did not get wickets, but in Melbourne, I got an edge without even beating a batsman once.”