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Follow UsPossible over-reliance on Bumrah — form, inexperience & injury concerns for India’s pace attack
Four years ago, India ended the 2020/21 Border-Gavaskar Trophy with a pace attack of Mohammed Siraj, T Natarajan, Shardul Thakur and Navdeep Saini at the Gabba, but they began the tour with a pretty strong pace contingent at their disposal: Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav & Mohammed Siraj.
This time around, though, India have an extremely inexperienced pace unit from the get go — only Siraj and Bumrah have prior Test experience in Australia, with every other pacer in the squad not even having first-class experience in the country. In fact, between them, Harshit Rana and Akash Deep have played a grand total of one FC game outside India.
To further add to this point, Rana only has played nine first-class games in his career. For all the talk about India’s ‘C’ team conquering Australia last time around, Siraj, Shardul and Saini were all domestic veterans at the time of the series. Even Natarajan had 20 FC games under his belt at the time of his Test debut, which is 11 more than Rana’s current tally and, in fact, one more than Prasidh Krishna's current tally as well.
In that sense, this time around, a lot hinges on the two senior speedsters Bumrah and Siraj, with Mohammed Shami ruled out. But there’s a catch here, and that’s Siraj’s form. The 30-year-old has averaged 42.83 with the ball across his last seven Tests and has just been dropped from the Test side. Siraj is someone who is a confidence / momentum-driven bowler and heading into the Australia Tests, he is not in the zone India want him to be.
It looks like Bumrah will hence have to shoulder a lot of responsibility. And that’s not good news at all, considering he will enter the BGT having already played four Tests (or possibly five Tests) in the space of 40 days.
Nitish Reddy provides balance on paper, but is picking him a step too far?
Having a pace-bowling all-rounder at your disposal in SENA Test matches is invaluable. When Hardik Pandya was still fit enough to play red-ball cricket, he added a whole new dimension to the side, although admittedly his performances were decent at best.
The idea of Nitish Reddy in Australia is very enticing. Here you have a very promising all-rounder who can double up as both a fourth seamer and a quality lower-order bat. Not quite in a Ben Stokes way, but, you know, at least in a Wiaan Mulder or Faheem Ashraf way.
By having Nitish in the team, India will have four seam-bowling options while having a batter that’s significantly better than any of the seamers in the squad. And, let’s be honest, you don’t really need your fourth seamer to be a frontline pacer; it’s much better off for the individual to be a better batter than a bowler.
But the problem is, at this stage in his career, playing Tests in Australia might be a step too far for the 21-year-old.
Nitish is all of 21 FC games old and is yet to represent India ‘A’. Despite his bowling numbers being pretty decent - 55 wickets @ 26.01 - he is not a frontline seamer by any means and his batting numbers are borderline hideous. The 21-year-old has batted 35 times in red-ball cricket and has averaged 21.45. He’s only crossed the 50-run mark thrice in his career.
Throwing a player who is clearly still very much in the developmental stage into the deep end might hence prove to be a disaster.
The unofficial Tests against Australia ‘A’ should tell us if Nitish is ready or not.
End of Shardul Thakur’s Test career?
There’s hardly been an India SENA Test match in the last four years that has not featured Shardul Thakur. Thanks to the balance he brings to the side, the 33-year-old has even managed to keep Ravichandran Ashwin out of the starting XI in games outside the subcontinent. And, to his credit, Shardul chipped in with multiple game and series-defining contributions despite evidently lacking consistency, particularly with the ball (his primary skill).
But it looks like we might just have seen the last of Shardul in Indian whites. He’s not been picked in the extended squad for the BGT, nor has he been named in the reserves. Forget that, the 33-year-old has not even been named in the India ‘A’ squad for the unofficial Tests against Australia ‘A’, meaning the selectors and the management aren’t even looking at him as a potential reserve.
If this is indeed the end, Shardul can be proud of his red-ball career. He was instrumental in two victories: the Gabba and fourth Test against England at The Oval. He picked up a seven-wicket haul in Johannesburg and was one of the very few Indian players who showed fight in the World Test Championship (WTC) Final against Australia. And he did all this in a space of 11 games.
A much-deserved call-up for Easwaran, but is he actually the first cab off the rank?
Abhimanyu Easwaran has been unstoppable in red-ball cricket this year and he’s rightly been rewarded with a call-up for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Ruturaj Gaikwad being named India ‘A’ captain initially made many think that Easwaran getting called up was not a certainty, but those fears have been quashed.
But does this mean that Easwaran *will* debut in case one of the top-order batters miss out due to injury or personal reasons? Debatable.
READ: Who should be India’s reserve top-order batter for BGT 2024/25?
Being an opener, Easwaran should logically be the first cab off the rank but as we discussed in an earlier article, it’s hard to fully rule out Washington Sundar being used as a spare batter. Coach Gautam Gambhir seems to really like the utility Washington provides and the 25-year-old, mind you, will also provide the team with an extra bowling option if he bats up the order. Meaning India can still drop Ashwin and have an off-spinner in the starting XI to complement Jadeja.
If, say, Rohit is unavailable, it is also hard to fully rule out the possibility of Shubman Gill opening and India drafting in one of KL Rahul or Sarfaraz Khan into the side.
Easwaran might have to keep piling the runs in the ‘A’ series in order to move to the top of the pecking order.
The KL Rahul wicketkeeper experiment is over
About a year ago, in the two-Test series away in South Africa, India, in the absence of Rishabh Pant, entertained the idea of utilising Rahul as a wicketkeeper in SENA Tests. And the sizzling ton the right-hander smashed in Centurion did make the idea look like a masterstroke.
But a year on, it looks like India have dropped the idea of shoehorning KL as a keeper in Tests, evident by the fact that Dhruv Jurel has been named in the BGT squad.
It could have a lot to do with Rahul’s own form with the bat in hand; the uncertainty around his batting. Rahul as a keeper makes total sense if he’s firing with the bat because you get a gloveman who can walk into the side as a specialist batter alone. But if he’s not getting any runs, you really wouldn’t want to be picking a part-time keeper for big away assignments.
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