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Team India's worst nightmare turned into reality when the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on October 03 (Monday) confirmed that ace bowler Jasprit Bumrah will miss the upcoming T20 World Cup in Australia due to a back stress fracture. Bumrah, India’s spearhead, who is struggling with a back injury, made a short-lived comeback against Australia in the T20I series and relapsed into the injury which ruled him out of the South Africa series entirely. The injury forced him to miss out on Asia Cup 2022 as well.
The writings on the wall were pretty evident before the clincher on Bumrah’s chances to play at the World Cup was delivered by the BCCI, but Saurav Ganguly refused to rule him out completely. However, the confirmation ended all speculation on Bumrah’s injury status and India have been dealt with a double whammy as star all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja, who has a right knee injury, was earlier ruled out of the marquee tournament.
The BCCI is still sitting on the fence over replacement for Bumrah which will be announced soon. Mohammed Shami and Deepak Chahar are the other pace bowlers on their reserve list. Mohammed Siraj has also been added to the reserves for T20 World Cup.
Amidst all the speculations on who should get the nod to play as Bumrah's replacement, former Indian captain and now cricket pundit, Sunil Gavaskar strongly believes that Bumrah’s absence is going to graze India’s chances and jeopardize plans at the World Cup and no other bowler would measure up to his performance at the World Cup.
This rings true after India’s growing concerns with death bowling becoming more intricate as all the tried bowlers for the job – Arshdeep Singh, Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, Harshal Patel – have leaked plenty of runs in the 19th over.
"Jasprit Bumrah's absence from the Indian team for the World Cup will hurt India considerably. There's no other player in the Indian team, with due respect to every other player, whose absence means so much than Bumrah," Gavaskar wrote in his column for Mid-Day.
"We saw in the two games that he played how effective he was and how his presence in the team galvanised the other bowlers. Whether he made the comeback too soon, is now something in the nature of conjecture, but the fact remains that his absence is a huge blow for India’s prospects in the T20 World Cup. The way Deepak Chahar and young Arshdeep Singh exploited the conditions in Thiruvananthapuram does give hope that, with a bit of luck, they can fill in a fair bit of the hole left by Bumrah's absence," he added.
