New Delhi: “Bas ab. Nahi lag raha jor (Enough now. I can’t make any more effort),” a tired Bumrah told his skipper Rohit Sharma when egged for scalping the final Australian wicket on the penultimate day of the fourth Test at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in December last year.
That one moment left the team management and fans distraught as Bumrah had kept India’s chances alive in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) series. Before he threw down the towel, the Indian pace ace had sent down 50 overs spanning 16 spells under a hot sun in Melbourne.
The pace spearhead, in the absence of fellow bowler Mohammed Shami and the wayward form of Mohammed Siraj, was bowled to exhaustion. The scoreboard showed that he bowled 151.2 overs over five Test matches—the most he had bowled in a series after debuting for India in January 2018.
As Bumrah missed the second innings of the final match in Sydney after suffering a back spasm, the Indian cricket community was up in arms against head coach Gautam Gambhir and Rohit for pushing Bumrah to the brink. Despite his record haul of 32 wickets, India slumped to a 1-3 Test series defeat in Australia.
Eight months on, the team management’s decision to field him in only three of the five Test series against England reopened debate around his fitness and longevity in the longest format. Though the heroics of Siraj ultimately saw India carve out a 2-2 draw in the Anderson-Tendulkar trophy, the talk of Bumrah’s ‘injury-prone’ streak remains one of the most-talked about discussions in cricket circles.
For now, cricket lovers can breathe easy as the Indian pace head Jasprit Bumrah has now cleared the fitness test in Bengaluru ahead of the upcoming Asia Cup & Australia One-Day International (ODI) tour.
Overall, the pace sensation has bowled a whopping 1,558 overs in 48 Test matches. If the ODI record is considered, then he has delivered 763 overs spread over 89 matches.
While Bumrah has received a lot of criticism of late for missing “big” games and tournaments for “workload management”, a look at his bowling numbers paint a different picture altogether—a generational talent carrying India’s pace bowling department on his shoulders despite a nagging back, partly because of his unique bowling action.
Successful, but most burdened pacer
Ever since the strapping pacer was fast-tracked into the Test squad on the tour of South Africa in January 2018, he has been India’s most-used pace bowler in nearly all games overseas.
India moved on from Ishant Sharma after 2021 and then Umesh Yadav after the 2023 World Test Championship final. In between these two bowlers, Siraj made his Test debut in 2020. But it was only after the Hyderabad bowler—after his exploits at the MCG Test against Australia on his Test debut— that Bumrah had an able deputy to shoulder the responsibility of leading the Indian bowling attack in Test matches.
In his seven and a half years of Test match career, Bumrah has played 75 percent of matches away from home and has bowled the most number of overs among all Indian pacers in nearly all innings and matches.
The very first test match against South Africa saw Bumrah bowl 30-plus overs in the two innings. At the end of three-match series, his bowling figures stood at 112.1 overs, much more than Shami, the only other Indian pacer to play the entire series. Skipper Virat Kohli used Shami for 83.3 overs.
In the next overseas Test series against England in 2018, Bumrah bowled 133.2 overs in three matches—significantly higher than the bowling stints of Shami and Ishant Sharma, who bowled 118 and 99 overs, respectively.
The trend continued during the 2018-19 BGT series, as Bumrah logged 155 overs—higher than 134.4 overs bowled by Shami across four Test matches in Australia.
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Critical for home wins, too
Bumrah played his first Test match at home only in early 2021 when Joe Root-led England came on a four-match series. Contrary to the belief that pitches overseas suit him, the tall bowler is also critical to the team’s fortune when they take on visitors.
But here too, a combination of factors led to Bumrah shouldering equal responsibility in domestic pitches. Seasoned pacer Shami suffered an injury to Achilles tendon in the 2023 World Cup. Surgery and rehabilitation kept him out of international duties from November 2023. A side strain meant that he would miss out on the BGT series in November 2024. That meant additional pressure on Bumrah.
As India decided to play on true surfaces against Ben Stokes-led England last year, India needed a potent pace attack to counter the thrilling stroke-making of the side looking to ‘Bazball’ their way.
Bumrah played in four out of the five-match series—the most in any series at home and subsequently 13 Test matches in a year—the most in any calendar year since his debut in 2018.
His workload was limited to eight and a half overs in the first innings of the first Test as England folded up for 246 runs. But he had to bowl a lot more in the second innings as England posted 420 runs in 102.1 overs.
Bumrah was the third most used bowler after spinners Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin. Jadeja and Ashwin bowled 34 and 29 overs; Bumrah delivered 16.1 overs. The other pacer, Siraj, bowled just seven overs.
At Vizag in the second Test, Bumrah bowled almost 16 overs out of nearly 56-over-long first innings of England. Even in the second innings, Bumrah bowled 17.2 overs, just short of 18 overs bowled by Ashwin. The other pacer, Mukesh Kumar, bowled only five overs.
This game highlighted the gulf between Bumrah and the other Indian pacers, as well as the temptation faced by Rohit to use him that extra over for a quick wicket. Every time India needed a result, the skipper had no choice but to bring back Bumrah into the attack.
The return of Siraj for the third Test earned Bumrah some rest. Burmah then played the fifth and final game of the series against England. Overall, he bowled 103.5 overs in four Tests.
He then featured against New Zealand later in 2024, as India were chasing valuable points to reach another World Test Championship final. The visiting side, however, whitewashed India 0-3 to deny them any points.
Recurring injuries
June 2018 marked the first time that Bumrah had to sit out for injuries—a fracture to his left thumb during a T20I against Ireland made him unavailable for the subsequent England series.
He did not feature in three Test matches at home against Afghanistan and the West Indies, held between two overseas Test tours of South Africa and Australia in the 2018-19 season. Next year, he missed out on the Test series against Bangladesh and South Africa due to a stress fracture in his back.
In 2021, Bumrah played two Tests against England at home before requesting that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) release him for personal reasons. The rest may also have been a blessing in disguise, as the series was sandwiched between two gruelling Test tours between Australia and England.
Bumrah had already bowled 117.4 overs across the first three Tests of the series in 2020-21, which included one at a flat Sydney surface before entering the home series against Australia.
His workload in Australia was second only to fellow pacer Mohammed Siraj, who made his debut in the second Test at Melbourne, logging 134.2 overs across the three Tests. Another gruelling overseas Test series in England saw him bowl 151 overs in the four Tests.
Following on, Bumrah was rested at home against New Zealand after the England tour in 2021. He came back for the three-match Test series against South Africa towards the end of 2021. That series saw Bumrah bowling 104.5 overs.
He then featured in two home Tests against Sri Lanka in 2022, before playing the final game of the 2021 Test series against England, which was left incomplete due to the Covid outbreak in the Indian camp. He also played in the ODI series that followed, but was withdrawn from the third and final game of the series.
I am gutted that I won’t be a part of the T20 World Cup this time, but thankful for the wishes, care and support I’ve received from my loved ones. As I recover, I’ll be cheering on the team through their campaign in Australia 🇮🇳 pic.twitter.com/XjHJrilW0d
— Jasprit Bumrah (@Jaspritbumrah93) October 4, 2022
The BCCI initially revealed his exclusion was due to back spasms, but his prolonged exclusion, including from the T20 Asia Cup, raised concerns around the extent of his injury. The back injury proved to be more serious, as he skipped the T20 World Cup in Australia in 2022. England, the eventual champions, defeated India in the semi-final stage.
The pacer was also ruled out of the BGT series played at home in 2023. His absence hurt India at the 2023 ICC World Test Championship final, when the bowlers failed to stop the juggernaut of Australian batsmen Steve Smith and Travis Head.
Bumrah made his way back into the ODI squad just before the 2023 Asia Cup and also played in the ODI World Cup.
Defensive tactics a strain
In July last year, Gautam Gambhir took over as the team’s head coach from Rahul Dravid with the away series against Sri Lanka as his first challenge. Gambhir is known to favour all-rounders in Tests, a departure from the approach adopted by his predecessors Dravid and Ravi Shastri who preferred specialist batsmen and bowlers.
While on paper it provides “depth” to bowling and batting departments, the flip side is that the tactic limits the bowling arsenal to a select few bowlers. Most of the decisions that have backtracked on the team are primarily of playing the wrong players on surfaces unsuitable to their bowling style.
Shastri and Dravid were fine with five bowlers even at the expense of thinning the batting order. This resulted in Ishant, Shami, Bumrah, and Bhubaneshwar Kumar. They also had the services of a fit and roaring Hardik Pandya, who did better in seaming conditions.
In contrast, Gambhir played Nitish Reddy as the fourth bowler on a seamer-friendly surface in Sydney earlier this year. This happened despite Bumrah and Siraj coming on the back of a workload of four games behind them, where they had to shoulder the majority of the bowling workload.
Dravid’s imprint was clear on at least two occasions. After losing against South Africa in Centurion, India were down 0-1 in a two-match series in 2023-24. In the second and final game of the series, the onus of wicket-taking did not fall on Bumrah alone. The additional pacer, Mukesh Kumar, brought in place of Shardul Thakur, chipped in with 10 overs out of 36 overs in the final innings and took the prized scalp of Dean Elgar.
Another such situation was seen when India lost in the first game of their next series against England at home early last year. To add to their misery, spinner Ravindra Jadeja got ruled out due to injury. India had only Axar and Ashwin as bowling all-rounders. Dravid and skipper Rohit opted to go for an aggressive option in the form of left-arm unorthodox spinner Kuldeep Yadav. India went on to win the game.
Gambhir, on the other hand, has shown inclination to extend the batting lineup till at least the eighth position in Tests.
After defeating Australia on a raging seamer-friendly track in Perth late last year , India played only three pace options in a pink-ball Test match in Adelaide. One of them was Harshit Rana, who made his debut just in the previous game. His ability to bowl tight spells was still untested, and he could not handle the onslaught by Travis Head.
Skipper Rohit could rely on him only for 16 overs, as he leaked 86 runs. Bumrah and Siraj had to bowl 47.3 overs out of 87.3 overs bowled by India. Nitish Reddy, who was picked to provide “depth”, could bowl only six overs in the decisive first innings.
The script remained the same during the third Test when Reddy could bowl only 13 overs out of a total of 117.1 overs. The trio of Bumrah, Siraj and Akash Deep had to bowl 81 overs since the surface did not have enough to offer Jadeja in the first innings. Australia posted a mammoth 445 runs.
Rain saved India in the game, but no lessons were learned from it. The team again fielded three pacers: Bumrah, Siraj and Akash Deep. However, some changes were made to strengthen the bowling attack further. Even then Bumrah went on to bowl nearly 29 overs while Akash and Siraj bowled 26 and 23 overs. Reddy and spinner Washington Sundar combined to bowl 22 overs.
By the stumps on the fourth day, Bumrah had bowled more than 50 overs across 16 spells in the Test series. Both Akash and Siraj had run out of their incisiveness with the ball, and hence, Bumrah was bowled to the ground. He put his hands up to decline Rohit’s call to polish off the Australian tail.
Not surprisingly, the 31-year-old had to leave the ground midway through the next game in Sydney, and India could not cope without him despite impressive bowling from Siraj and Prasidh Krishna on a seamer-friendly track.
In England, both the wickets and workload were shared by Indian bowlers: Siraj and Akash Deep in Birmingham and Siraj and Prasidh at the Oval in London. Bumrah was available only for three Tests. The two wins at Edgbaston and Oval were heroic, but the template should be far from ideal for any side with sound strategic logic.
“Obviously, it is tough for any individual to keep playing everything for so long. I’ve been doing it for a while, but eventually you have to understand where your body is going, what is the important tournament,” Bumrah told Michael Clarke in the former Australian cricketer’s podcast, Beyond 23, in May.
“You have to be a little selective and smart about how you use your body. As a cricketer, I would never want to leave anything and always keep on going. But I don’t set goals or look at numbers. Whenever I have (set goals), I’ve never been able to fulfil them,” he added.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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