'Welcome, Mufasa' - No-nonsense Bumrah returns with typically no-nonsense Bumrah spell

For a little while at the Mumbai Indians (MI) training, Jasprit Bumrah was bigger than everybody. Towering over the man that won them multiple titles and soaring above their one-of-a-kind captain. He was put there because someone had hoisted him up into the air.

It is not a space Bumrah is used to. He rarely puts himself there. History is littered with fast bowlers who believed they could fly. The trigger is usually when they manage to break a set of wooden sticks that people keep putting 22 yards in front of them. Bumrah is an expert at it and though there are instances where he too indulges, for the most part he prefers being where his feet are.

He showed that once more against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), when his first ball after suffering a back injury was so no nonsense. On a length. Threatening the stumps. Forcing the batter to act. It was at 139.5kph. That's not far off his top speed. He cranked it up when Virat Kohli was on strike: 142kph. But the batter - thanks to a long history of both watching Bumrah on the field and facing him in the nets - knew exactly what he would do. Hit that length again. Keep the stumps in play again. Kohli gave up his stumps and thanks to that bit of bravery he now had the room to smash the ball over midwicket for six.

It is remarkable, given the gifts that Bumrah has, how much he values the basics of fast bowling. He hits the pitch hard. He makes sure the seam is upright. He asks questions that are entirely textbook. Just that they feel out of syllabus sometimes because of his bowling action and crucially that hyperextended elbow, which shrinks the length of the playing surface. It is perhaps this adherence to the tried and tested that makes it possible for him to return to cricket after 93 days in rehab and be the only bowler who isn't smashed all around the park.

The difference in his economy rate (7.25) and the next best (10) was once again startling. Doubly so given it's only been days since he's been cleared to bowl after the back injury that denied him a full participation in the Sydney Test earlier this year. People expected him to be rusty. At least a little bit. And he was. There have been 19 other instances in the IPL where the difference between his economy rate and the next best was higher (only bowlers who had finished their quota of overs were considered.)

As ever, he bowled the toughest phases. One in the powerplay and two in the death. He came on for the 18th over after his captain Hardik Pandya had been hit for 24 runs in the previous one. At the time, it felt like the ball had taken leave of the earth's gravity, intent only on flying through the air. Bumrah, though, brought it back to where his feet were. Six runs in six balls. A set batter and a finisher shut all the way down. Rajat Patidar and Jitesh Sharma couldn't line him up. His slower balls worked. His back-of-lengths gave them no room. His full tosses - he bowled seven - might have actually surprised them. Nobody expects Bumrah to miss his mark. He might hold fire, like he did when he jogged up to collect the ball and then feign a throw at Kohli's stumps. The two players shared a big old laugh after that.

With more games behind him, he will start to trust his body and those fast-twitch fibers will make sure the attempted yorker count goes down and the executed yorker (three) count goes up. Soon he will be back to his best. A man worth more than anybody else in the MI dugout. A star who turned a two-time T20 World Cup winner into a preening fan boy. "Welcome Mufasa," Kieron Pollard said. Bumrah came down shaking his head. He really doesn't like getting carried away.