Former India bowling coach Paras Mhambrey believes that veteran speedster Mohammed Shami's absence will be majorly missed by the pace department in the five-Test match series against England. Shami, who was a part of India's ICC Champions Trophy 2025 winning squad, has been unable to cut the Shubman Gill-led side's 18-member team for the England tour.
Shami is the most experienced pacer in the squad currently, made a formidable pair alongside Jasprit Bumrah on India's last tour of the United Kingdom, but this time round, only the younger of the two has travelled to spearhead the bowling attack.
Mhambrey also mentioned how Shami used to be a perfect bowling partner to Bumrah, but now, it has to be someone like Mohammed Siraj, who is slightly less experienced and yet the second-most important addition to the unit.
"You've got to miss Shami's experience, right? Unfortunately, he is not there on the tour. Prior to this, you had three bowlers, experienced bowlers playing together. You have had Shami, Bumrah. You usually had Umesh in between. We played a lot of cricket together then. You don't have that option out here," Mhambrey told Hindustan Times.
"The second best from here is Mohammed Siraj. He needs to share the workload with Bumrah. The expectation shouldn't be that only Bumrah will go out and deliver for you. Siraj needs to shoulder that responsibility and do the job for the team because he is the senior-most after Bumrah out here. Someone like Prasidh has only a few Test matches under his belt, and the same is true for Akash Deep. Arsh [Arshdeep Singh] is on his debut. You don't want to have that pressure on them," he added.
The upcoming five-Test match series against England will see India kick off a new era in Test cricket under Shubman Gill's captaincy. This will be India's first red-ball assignment after the back-to-back retirements of Ravichandran Ashwin, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli from the longest format of the game.
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The upcoming five-Test match series against England will be India's first red-ball assignment after the five-Test match series of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-25 in Australia, where the hosts registered 3-1 win against India to seal their spot in the World Test Championship (WTC) final.