Jasprit Bumrah at Eden Gardens: The many bursts of genius

For a working-day morning, Eden Gardens packed in surprisingly well. The galleries filled up with a noisy crowd, and a thin drift of expectation hung in the cold morning air. Chants for Bumrah were belted out from different pockets as he ran in.

But what came up first was chaos. Swing, no-bounce, extra bounce—an entire buffet of the untamable variety. Mohammed Siraj endured a false start. Aiden Markram and Ryan Rickelton helped themselves to quick runs.

In the South African dressing room, Temba Bavuma would've sunk into his chair with satisfaction after winning the toss.

But as is his wont, Bumrah made him, and the hopeful thousands at the venue, sit up. "When I bowled the first over, everything happened. The ball swung, it stayed low, it went high. It was a little difficult to understand what was the right length. So you keep bowling and you keep figuring things out," Bumrah said at the end of the day.

It took more than 10 overs for that realisation to materialise into anything tangible. By then, Shubman Gill had already dismantled his slip cordon. In his sixth over, Bumrah squared up Rickelton from round the stumps. An over later, the same unpredictability of the conditions sided with him to nick off Aiden Markram. Inside the first hour, Bavuma was off his chair and into the middle, while his batters began to mistrust the bounce.

"Basically, it's the harder ball game. When the ball is nice and hard, maybe the deviation would be a little quicker. When the ball becomes softer, the deviation lessens and then your accuracy comes into play," Bumrah explained.

Shubman Gill uses his best bowler without much nuance in a home Test. After an opening burst of 7-4-9-2, Bumrah strode out with purpose again right after Lunch. There was no scope for a mid-day slumber, not for the fans or the locked-in pair of Tony de Zorzi and Wiaan Mulder, who'd already batted 11 overs together. In the first six overs of the session, both were sent packing, with Bumrah cracking open de Zorzi's resolve. On the very next ball, he floored Kyle Verreynne with an inswinging yorker.

Even with a shorter spell this time (5-0-13-1), Bumrah left the visitors too groggy to quickly find their composure. Bumrah was at the wheel of a day-defining middle session where India knocked back five wickets, and then spearheaded the last one again, closing it out as he began the morning. Uneven bounce conspired with him to snuff out Simon Harmer, before he brought out the oldest two-fold trick from the fast bowling manual for Keshav Maharaj. The No. 11 was hurried by a bouncer first ball, and then got an inswinging yorker on his boot.

As the two South Africans walked off, Bumrah stood in the middle of the pitch, both arms raised in celebration for his 16th Test fifer. His teammates swarmed him. The Kolkata crowd was on its feet, applauding the man who accentuated the return of Test cricket to these corners after six long years.

Bumrah found admirers in the opposite camp as well. South Africa batting coach Ashwell Prince doffed his hat to the different bursts of genius that the pacer conjured, while lamenting that his batters couldn't combat the unevenness of the Eden pitch.

"But that's the challenge of Test cricket, right?," Bumrah reckoned. "Wherever you go… to different conditions, the challenge is different. We went to South Africa and in five sessions, a Test match was over. It's never a simple answer that this is how the wicket should be."

In all the wreckage of the day, the missing subtext sat right in front of you: this was also the full, unforgiving experience of facing one of the world's very best.