Fast & furious: Umran Malik's thunderbolts surprise everyone in IPL 2021

While the sun might have set on Hyderabad's IPL campaign this season but it's a new dawn for the young 21-year-old Umran Malik. The tearaway fast bowler from Jammu & Kashmir grabbed the attention of the nation and the world on Wednesday night during the match against Virat Kohli's Royal Challengers Bangalore.

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Malik who only started bowling with a leather ball just 3 years ago, stunned everyone when he unleased his pace on RCB's batters. One of the deliveries touched 152.95 kmph which is the fastest ball of IPL 2021. The express pace along with a clean action attracted the attention of many former cricketers and cricket pundits who began comparing Umran Malik's action to former Pakistani legend Waqar Younis.

His teammate, Jason Holder was stunned by Umran's consistency. Holder said, "Well, I think the first thing to mention is his pace. You know that's his asset, his biggest asset is his pace. He's just been you know consistent in training, he's been giving us quite a hard time in training, he's been very, very hard to get hold of. As you've seen in the games here, he's obviously deceiving a lot of batters for pace and that extra pace always adds a boost to any bowling attack. So it's good to see his control as well, too. You know a lot of guys who've bowled quick over the years, generally sometimes may seem erratic, but you know he's been pretty consistent and he's grouped really good deliveries together."

Out of the 24 deliveries he bowled against RCB, 11 were above the 145 kmph mark which left the fans speechless. Interestingly, Malik was drafted into the SRH team as a net bowler and only got the chance to perform on the big stage after T Natarajan injured himself.

After troubling the main SRH batters like David Warner and Kane Williamson in the nets, Malik finally found himself making the debut in IPL against Kolkata Knight Riders in the previous game but made the world notice his talent against RCB on Wednesday night.

The cherry on top came right at the end of the game when Malik got Team India captain Virat Kohli to sign a jersey for him.