How wonderful it must be to be able to summon Jasprit Bumrah when the team is in a spot, secure in the knowledge that the best bowler in the world will not let the captain or the side down?
How frustrating it must be to be able to summon only Jasprit Bumrah when the team is in a spot, not sure if the others will rise to the challenge?
Rohit Sharma is experiencing these highs and lows as we speak. This series ought to have been India vs Australia, India’s pace attack vs the hosts’ top-order batting. Instead, after three matches, it has devolved into Bumrah vs Australia. No two ways.
But while Bumrah has been the behemoth across both teams, with an extraordinary 21 wickets at the niggardly average of 10.90, and while the figures might suggest otherwise, India haven’t been only about Bumrah. Mohammed Siraj has tried gamely and boasts 13 wickets from three Tests, third in the list of leading wicket-takers with Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins (14 apiece) separating the Indians. In normal course, Siraj’s average of 23.92 and a strike-rate of 38.3 (a wicket every 6.2 overs) would have stood out, but given the unreal numbers Bumrah has stacked up, he has assumed the avatar of a one-man army.
India have been handicapped by the absence of Mohammed Shami, but it’s something they have gotten used to in the last 13 months. The Bengal quick last played for the country on 19 November 2023, in the 50-over World Cup final, and on Monday, the Board of Control for Cricket in India snuffed any lingering hopes that he might join the team in Australia, pointing to occasional swelling in the knee, a post-operation fallout, as the deal-breaker. Shami was the ideal foil for Bumrah with the new ball, Siraj was an admirable first-change from the time he made his debut in December 2020. That was when India had a wealth of pace-bowling riches to pick from. Among those jostling for spots were Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Ishant Sharma, Umesh Yadav, even Hardik Pandya, still available to play red-ball cricket then.
Where is India’s pace battery?
The passage of time accounted for Bhuvneshwar, Ishant and Umesh, Pandya decided his body wasn’t ideally suited for the rigours of five-day cricket and Saini fell by the wayside, struck down by injuries which seem to be the in-thing among quicks in world cricket now. Jofra Archer has hardly played a game in the last five or so years, Ben Stokes is more in the infirmary than out of it and India’s fast bowlers have grappled with injuries galore, which hasn’t allowed Rohit and first Rahul Dravid, then Gautam Gambhir, to assemble the kind of pace attack Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri did during their long tenure between the middle of 2017 and the end of 2021.
By the time Kohli and Shastri came together as captain and head coach, India already had an established Test pace attack; the addition of Bumrah to the mix in January 2018 completed the set, but the natural order of things meant their successors had to piece together an entirely new-look attack with Bumrah as the firing pin and the rest complementing him. With limited success, India have tried out Mukesh Kumar, Prasidh Krishna and Harshit Rana, all in the last 12 months, while Akash Deep alone of this group has stepped up and delivered reasonably on his promise and potential.
Between them, Mukesh, Prasidh and Rana have played seven Tests. Mukesh is 31, Prasidh 28 and Rana the youngest at 23. Deep, who has been impressive in his six Tests but hasn’t managed more than 13 wickets, is 28. Rana apart, the ages aren’t particularly promising; there is greater depth when it comes to the white-ball formats with Arshdeep Singh, Avesh Khan, Khaleel Ahmed and the likes weighing in, but India’s pace bowling Test cupboard looks a little barren and a lot inadequate if one takes Bumrah out.
Like Virat Kohli or Sachin Tendulkar before him, Bumrah is a once-in-a-lifetime cricketer but he is also 31 years old, will slip into his tenth year of international cricket next month and will undoubtedly manage himself when it comes to limited-overs internationals. That he has been named Rohit’s deputy, while Shubman Gill was the vice-captain in Bumrah’s absence during the T20I and ODIs series in Sri Lanka in July-August, is a clear indication of what the thought process of the decision-making group is. India need Bumrah in Test-match play – not just to be the battering ram, but also the mentor and the guide and the teacher and the inspiration so that the next generation of incisive quicks comes through. But don’t hold your breath for long.
