Former New Zealand pace bowler Shane Bond has warned Team India’s management to carefully manage Jasprit Bumrah’s workload from now on, saying that another back surgery could also threaten his career. With a five-match Test series against England coming, Bond believes the speedster shouldn’t be playing in more than two or three in a row as well.

However, Bumrah’s back injury returned during the Australia tour as he didn’t bowl in the second innings of the final Test and went off the field for scans due to his back injury as well. Eventually, he was also ruled out of the Champions Trophy as the selectors didn’t want to risk him as well.

Speaking to ESPN Cricinfo during the Champions Trophy, Bond said, “He’s too valuable for the next World Cup and stuff. So you’d be looking at five Tests in England, I wouldn’t want to be playing him in any more than two in a row. They may say, look, it’s four Test matches in total. Or three.”

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He further stated, “If we can get him through the English summer and he’s fit, we can probably then go with some confidence that we can carry him across the rest of the formats. So that’s hard because he is your best bowler, but if he has another injury in the same spot, that could be a career-ender, potentially, because I’m not sure you can have surgery on that spot again.”

He also recalled Jasprit Bumrah going off during the Sydney Test and recalled feeling that it wasn’t just a sprain, as some people thought as well.

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“When he went off for scans, it was at Sydney, there was some messaging coming up around that he had sprains and stuff like that. I worried that it wasn’t going to be a sprain, it might be a bony injury around that area [the back]. I thought he may struggle to make the Champions Trophy if it was,” Shane Bond concluded.