2 days ago
Indian cricket must not adjust for Bumrah, Bumrah must
I guess enough time has gone by for us to now look back at the India England series rationally and perhaps less emotionally. Jasprit Bumrah in action against England during the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy. (Action Images via Reuters)
I must confess, I, too, like you, was floored by the performance of young India in an overseas, exhaustive Test series of 5 Test matches, each Test match lasting 5 days.
Firstly, my feeling about young India batters does not change, my chest is still pumped in the way (Yashasvi) Jaiswal, (Shubman) Gill, (KL) Rahul, (Rishabh) Pant, (Ravindra) Jadeja and even (Washington Sundar) Washy batted.
I won't tire saying that in this age of T20 cricket, what these T20 compatible batters have done is nothing short of phenomenal.
And we are not talking only about results here... it's how these results were achieved, it was through hardcore old fashioned Test batting of the extreme kind, defending for hours with a still bat, leaving balls outside off, ball after ball, when rest of the year these same batters are trying to hit a 6 off every ball, it was not just unbelievable but even hard to fathom.
They dug deep into their mental reserves not just for 2 or 3 or 4 Tests, but they still had enough left in the tank for another grind right at the end when most batters would be mentally done and finished. I am thinking of Yashasvi Jaiswal here.
That all this happened in front of packed audiences was icing on the cake! A great Test series played in front of an audience & a country that truly loves Test cricket.
Yes, it was a great Test series in many ways, especially for Indian fans a team devoid of all the big names, most of them on their first tour of England and that virtually every match finished so close was a much-needed blessing for Test cricket. So as a spectacle, it was two months of brilliance!
I could stop right here and finish my piece, but it's also important to look at things a little more deeply, address, as they say, the elephant in the room.
Great series for fans, yes great result for Indian cricket lovers yes, great advertisement for Test cricket yes, but what about quality? Was the cricket of the highest quality?
No, it wasn't. For starters, sorry to burst the bubble, it has to be one of the weakest bowling attacks from both sides that I have seen in a series featuring two main stream teams.
The one bowler with great skills and ability had a bizarre approach to playing in this series even before it began, so bowling greatness or excellence was seen very sporadically over 175 hours of Test cricket.
Flat pitches made matters even worse, in fact one felt sorry for them and admired those bowlers with clear limitations bowling their hearts out and making a difference, Siraj through the series and Ben Stokes in the matches that he played in, both bowled with a lion's heart.
That a class act like Kuldeep did not feature at all will remain one of the shocks of the series, when you are playing an opposition with a very weak bowling attack and a strange batting approach such selection blunders can cost you.
A similar approach versus Australia and India would pay a heavy price for it, like we saw recently in the BGT.
In the current euphoria these tactical mistakes if not questioned by the selectors and the BCCI, leave India vulnerable to another sound beating against a good side.
While admiring how India played we must also acknowledge how bad England was, then the follow up question also springs to mind, was this Next Gen India team so impressive because England was poor?
No, Jaiswal, Gill, Rahul & Pant & even Washy are your safe bets even against quality opposition but I fear for India's seam bowling and its strange tactics led by Gambhir with regards to playing XIs and bowling changes, if these controllables were handled better, India would have beaten the natives 3-1 you would think.
But this should not take the sheen off India's overall performance especially the execution side of things... in this area, young India was fantastic.
The second point I will make is this, that the game will always show us the mirror however much we try and gloss over things. It was poetic justice that the two Tests India won were two matches Bumrah did not play.
This should embolden the Indian selectors to make some hard choices when it comes to big-name players. This series has been a great lesson to them and to us too, the two Tests victories India achieved did not feature Virat (Kohli), (Cheteshwar) Pujara, Rohit (Sharma), (Mohammed) Shami and Bumrah too! It reminded us of the eternal truth of sport and life, no one, however great, is indispensable.
And this is how India must handle Bumrah.
If he cannot play more than two matches in a row or sometimes even more than one, he must not be your frontline pick.
Players who are match fit, eager, keen to play and perform should be picked any day for me over a highly skilled player. It will motivate such enthusiastic players even more.
This is not an idealistic position to take, but it's the right one for the long term health of a team sport.
In this series, Akash Deep & Siraj replicated the Bumrah impact in the two wins, of course, this is not likely become a pattern but it should give the selectors the guts to take hard calls on big name players, just as they do with Kuldeep Yadav.
As for Bumrah, of whom I am a fan, if he really wants to serve Indian Test cricket, longevity and durability is an imperative for him, it's after all the true test of a great athlete is to still turn up when not 100% fit and deliver.
Indian cricket must not adjust for Bumrah, Bumrah must. That is, if he wants to.
By making some tough choices or working even harder on his fitness, this fitness bar can be raised to whatever levels one wants, like all fast bowling greats have done before him.
