Amid the uncertainty over Jasprit Bumrah’s availability for the second Test in England, former India cricketer Irfan Pathan has opened up on how the bowling unit depends on the ace pacer as well. He also said that the other bowlers would face difficulty changing gears from bowling defensive to attacking lengths as well. Notably, India lost the first Test as well.
Irfan Pathan said on his YouTube channel: “How can it be sorted? The major challenge is that Bumrah’s partners bowl defensively, take a look at Prasidh Krishna, for example. But when Bumrah won’t play, then Krishna has to become an attacking bowler. Akash Deep and Mohammed Siraj have to become attacking bowlers. You’ve to play a different role when Bumrah is playing and when he isn’t playing. It creates confusion. Any bowler needs stability, and when it’s not there, there won’t be performance.”
The veteran also said how India failed to groom young pace bowlers during Ravi Shastri and Rahul Dravid’s coaching tenures.
He continued: “What was the mindset during Ravi Shastri and Rahul Dravid’s regime? They used to go with the quality they had and wanted to get results. If you look, Bumrah, Shami, Umesh Yadav, and Ishant Sharma was available during Shastri’s tenure. They used to play the majority of games, and one-off games was played by Navdeep Saini, T Natrajan also played in Australia, but was nowhere to be seen after that. The youngsters were not given priority.”
“Even during Rahul Dravid’s regime, Bumrah, Shami, Siraj grew there. They also went to Jaydev Unadkat, which was well deserving as well because he performed exceedingly well in domestic cricket. Otherwise, young fast bowlers were not given importance. Akash Deep played 3-4 games; Prasidh Krishna got 2-3 matches. During the majority, only senior fast bowlers played,” he again added.
“When they went to Bangladesh. They took Mohammed Siraj, who had played around 12-13 Tests. Should they’ve played young fast bowlers to grow? You could’ve taken a few of them alongside Unadkat, and a bigger group could’ve been prepared,” Irfan Pathan concluded.
