Playing Tests In England After IPL 2025 Will Be Huge Risk For Bumrah: Shane Bond

Former New Zealand seamer Shane Bond feels India’s ace paceman Jasprit Bumrah shouldn’t be playing more than two Tests in a row after he suffered another back injury during the final Test of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia earlier this year. The Mumbai Indians (MI) pacer hasn’t played any cricket since then and is also doubtful for the first half of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025.

Bumrah had back surgery in March 2023, and Bond said another injury in the same spot "could be a career-ender" for the 31-year-old. Bumrah is currently doing rehab at the BCCI's Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru doing rehab but there is no confirmation on when he will be back in action.

“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," Bond told ESPNcricinfo.

Bumrah didn’t feature in the recently concluded ICC Champions Trophy 2025, which India won by defeating New Zealand in the final on March 9. India are next scheduled to travel to England for a five-match Test series, starting on June 20, and Bond feels the onus will be on the team management and Bumrah to maintain his workload management.

"Look, I think Booms will be fine, but it's just that (workload) management (matters). Looking at the tours and the schedule going forward, where are the opportunities to give him a break, but really where are the danger periods? And often it is that the (transition from) IPL to the Test championship will be a risk,” said Bond, whose career was also marred with injuries.

"Anywhere you transition from particularly T20 to a Test match, it's challenging. If you are playing a one-day series, it's generally not too bad. You will play three games a week, you will have a practice, you are sort of in around that 40 overs (range), that's pretty close to a Test match week anyway. 

“But in T20, particularly in the IPL, when you might be playing three games in a week, there's two days of travel, you might get one training (session), you are sort of bowling 20 overs maybe if you're lucky. That's sort of half of a Test match load or even under a half of, which then is a big jump and you are not bowling back-to-back days. That's a big jump when you transition out of that."

Apart from all the red-ball cricket, there’s also a T20 World Cup in 2026, and the ODI World Cup in 2027, and India would want him completely fit for both these ICC events. "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. Coming out of the back end of the IPL into a Test match is going to be a huge risk. And so how do they manage that is going to be key.

"They may say, look, it's four Test matches in total. Or three. 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.

“So it's going to take some good management and just some open conversations with the player and say, look, we are doing this with your best interest in your career. Any player who's gone through that, and having myself (gone through it), you are desperate to play, but you also understand there are some risks at certain times and you have to make some compromises."