Jasprit Bumrah - Headman and master whip hand

Imagine how much fun it must be to have Jasprit Bumrah at your disposal as a Test captain. It means you're never out of any game. It means you can come back into a game at any point. It means you are always the trump card up your sleeve. It means if anything that you have the superpower to change the game whenever you please. The game is not over till you use your Bumrah card.

Just like Jasprit Bumrah would have found out for himself at the Perth Stadium over the last four days. Even if he wasn't ready to indulge the question asked to him along the same lines, saying rather sweetly "I can't answer that!".

Let's start with what transpired on Monday afternoon. When Bumrah used Bumrah to access everything in terms of the luxury a captain has with him in his team.

Travis Head was doing it again. He was not quite playing party pooper but was surely delaying India's march towards celebrating a famous win. It was a classic Head innings, playing shots to all parts of the ground, but also putting the Indian bowlers off their lengths while also keeping them out in the Perth heat for longer than they'd have warranted for. So, Bumrah brought Bumrah on.

He'd already figured out how he was going to sort Head out in his head. He'd already picked the mode of dismissal. He'd already plotted his demise. He'd also maybe already decided the exact ball when he'd execute his finishing move.

On he came, from around the wicket, cramping the aggressive left-hander before trying to get him fishing outside his off-stump. The first attempt didn't bring the outcome. So, he changed tact slightly. He went the bouncer way. Even if the short-pitched delivery he tried flew over the wicket-keeper's head for five wides. It wasn't probably planned. But how do you know with Bumrah. How can you say with Bumrah. For, the next delivery was just short of a length but wide enough to get the South Australian to poke at it as he's prone to do and having him caught behind to end the home team's final resistance. Head gone. Australia done. Chances of the Test dragging to Day 5, avoided.

Ask Bumrah about it, and he'll give you the most modest of answers, not to say it doesn't come across as genuine.

"Whenever we needed to do something, I was trying to put myself in that tough scenario to make the job a little bit easier for the new guys coming in."

And there couldn't have been a tougher scenario than the evening of the first day of a five-match Test series after you're team has been bowled out for 150. After you as captain decided to bat first on a spicy pitch. So, Bumrah turned to Bumrah, and in less than a session, he'd not only broken the back of the Australian batting line-up, but also set his team well on their way to a massive early advantage. He'd also drawn first blood in the crucial individual battles that will ideally decide the fate of this series, including Steve Smith off the first ball, and should have had Marnus Labuschagne out early too. Bumrah the captain and Bumrah the bowler had combined to turn the Test on its head in the space of a session.

It's not just his freakishly destructive bowling skills that you get with Bumrah though. It's so much more. It's his ability to stay engaged even when he doesn't have the ball in his hand. It's his ability to bring a sense of calm even in the tensest of moments. It's his ability to inspire his team, even when he's not bowling. And as we found it, it's his ability to motivate his team when they're seemingly down and out, as he did after the first innings disappointment with the bat.

How would you not believe Bumrah the captain if he tells you as a teammate that you can still alter the direction the game is headed in. Especially when you realise Bumrah the captain can simply throw the ball to Bumrah the bowler.

How much of a nightmare it must be to know the opposition captain has Jasprit Bumrah up his sleeve. Just when you think the team is in a good position, on comes Bumrah. Just when you think the team is about to break free, on comes Bumrah. Like he did, over and over again, to bury Australia's hopes of escaping from one of the most humiliating defeats on home soil in recent memory.

How much fun it must be to have Jasprit Bumrah at your disposal as a Test captain. Especially when the captain is Bumrah himself.