Jasprit Bumrah said the four-month break due to a stress fracture “wasn’t a difficult” period for him as there was “no pain” and he utilised the time away pretty well on his strength and conditioning. Bumrah has returned in the circuit against Sri Lanka in the ongoing T20I series here on Sunday.

“It was not difficult for me as I was never in pain. Not even for a single day. I took it as an opportunity to build my strength,” Jasprit Bumrah told bcci.tv after his first training session with the team.

He was aware of how the team was progressing and did his homework accordingly.

“I was always keeping a track on what is happening so when you are back in the team, you shouldn’t be too far away. When you play continuously, your strength level goes down. Your fitness level can also go down a little bit. So I was looking at how to bring the strength back, how to improve upon the things I wanted to improve. “So take some time off and return fresh. Be hungry again. So all these things were on top of my mind. I am not looking too far ahead. I wanted to take one match at a time,” said Bumrah.

“Initially what happened, I was playing a lot of cricket and it was very difficult to manage the hunger. I was playing regularly. Then I got a break and after that I felt like ‘now you want to play as soon as possible’. You are always eager but you don’t want to rush into things,” he added.

Bumrah thanked all the Indian support staff for their consistent support on his rehabilitation work and giving their valuable inputs as well.

“Very good inputs (from bowling coach Bharat Arun). I was always in touch with the support staff. The team management also kept on asking me what was going on and how was I progressing. Constant monitoring was going on. They asked questions like what do you want to do now that you are back from break,” said the speedster.

“The intensity was very good, very high intensity, to the point where you do exactly what you wanted to do. “At the fielding session, we covered all bases, we did the high catches, we did the run-out practice. And in the nets, we did spot bowling, practised bowling yorkers. We ticked all the boxes,” he concluded.