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Despite India recording a five-wicket defeat against England in the first Test of the five-match series at Headingley, Gautam Gambhir has refused to play Jasprit Bumrah for more than three matches in the gruelling tour. The India head coach believes that managing the 31-year-old's workload is very important and also revealed that the team management is yet to decide the other two Tests that the pacer will feature in.
Bumrah took a total of five scalps against England in the first Test
After racking up an impressive five-wicket haul in England's first innings at Headingley, Bumrah surprisingly went wicket-less in the second innings as the hosts cruised to the target of 371 on Day 5. It will be interesting to see who will become India's frontline pacer in the absence of Bumrah.
"No, we won't change the plans. I think for us, managing his workload is more important because there's a lot of cricket going forward, and we know what he brings to the table as well. So, before he came to the tour, it was already decided that he was going to play three Test matches. But let's see how his body turns out. We haven't decided which two other Test matches he's going to play," Gambhir said at the post-match press-conference.
Gambhir also showed faith on the young bowling attack that they have chosen for the England series. He remarked that the bowlers may be lacking in experience, but will continue to get better as the time passes. Except for Bumrah, India went for a total of five pacers in their squad including Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Arshdeep Singh and Harshit Rana.
"We absolutely have the bowling attack. We believe in them. We trust in them. When we pick the squad, we pick the squad on trust, not on hope. As I just mentioned, those are inexperienced bowlers, but they will keep getting better," Gambhir stated.
"And we saw in this Test match as well that for the first four and a half, four days, we were in a position, even on day five, where we could have won the Test match. So we believe, and we trust that these boys will deliver for us," he added.
Earlier, during an interview with his wife Sanjana Ganesan on the fourth day of the Headingley Test, Bumrah had received special requests from both Sunil Gavaskar and Cheteshwar Pujara, asking him to feature in all the five Tests against England.
“A request has come from above from Cheteshwar Pujara and Sunil Gavaskar. Don’t shoot the messenger, I am just telling you what they said, ‘Jasprit, please play all five, please please please,'” Sanjana said during the chat.
Bumrah had a cheeky reply in store for the request and stated that, “That is the conversation that we’ll have on other day.”
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