Bumrah is out of the Sri Lanka Tests, two days after clearing his fitness tests
India’s medical staff have told Jasprit Bumrah not to rush the left knee he has been managing since the T20 World Cup, and he will not travel for the two Tests. Auqib Nabi, passed over when the squad was picked, is the front-runner to replace him
Jasprit Bumrah will not travel to Sri Lanka. India’s fast bowler has been ruled out of the two-Test series that starts in Galle on 15 August, with the BCCI’s medical team advising him not to rush back while the left knee he has been managing since the T20 World Cup is still short of full recovery
Friday’s clearance, Sunday’s reversal
Two days ago the message was the opposite one. A BCCI injury and had cleared the fitness tests mandated by the Centre of Excellence, and that he was expected to be available for both matches. That was taken as the end of the matter, because the selectors had named him in the 15 subject to fitness and nobody in the set-up wanted to tour without him
What the clearance did not cover was bowling. Bumrah had not started bowling at the COE in Bengaluru, and the assessment that followed left the medical staff unconvinced that he could get through a Test series in Sri Lankan heat without the knee reacting again. He took the blow while fielding in the second ODI against England at Cardiff, and the swelling that followed ruled him out of the decider at Lord’s on 19 July. The underlying issue, as Cricinfo reported on Sunday, goes back further than that, to the end of India’s T20 World Cup campaign.
Passing a fitness test and being fit to bowl are separate questions, and India have answered the second one late
Auqib Nabi is the name in front
The replacement most likely to come in is the seamer the selectors left out a week ago. Auqib Nabi took 60 wickets at 12.56 last Ranji Trophy season, more than anyone else, and carried Jammu and Kashmir to the first title in their history, beating Karnataka in the Hubli final on a first-innings lead. When the Sri Lanka squad was named on 28 July he did not make it, because India picked only three seamers
He has been close to this group all year without being in it. He was one of six net bowlers called up before the one-off Test against Afghanistan in New Chandigarh in June, alongside Saransh Jain, who has since gone from that net to a Test squad. Nabi then took 4 for 58 at Galle on the India A tour of Sri Lanka, on the ground where the first Test will be played, which is about as relevant a piece of recent form as a replacement seamer can offer
None of that makes him a like-for-like anything. Bumrah is the bowler India use when a Test has gone flat, when the ball is 60 overs old and the pitch has stopped offering help to anyone. A big domestic season and a productive A tour earn a man a first cap. They do not fill that particular hole, and Nabi should not be judged against a standard nobody in the country meets
What is left of the attack
Mohammed Siraj and Prasidh Krishna are the two seamers with Test caps in the party. The third is Gurnoor Brar, the Punjab quick who is uncapped. Harshit Rana tore a hamstring during the England T20Is and Nitish Kumar Reddy is out with a quadriceps problem, so neither was ever in this conversation. Akash Deep is still working back from the lower-back stress injury that ended his IPL season and is aiming at the Duleep Trophy in September
The spin department is also lighter than planned. Washington Sundar’s hamstring keeps him out of at least the first Test, and it was that absence which opened the door for Saransh Jain, the Madhya Pradesh off-spinner handed a maiden call-up at 33. Ravindra Jadeja is back, Kuldeep Yadav travels, and Manav Suthar gives Shubman Gill a left-arm option
Galle will take spin and Colombo usually follows it, so the shape of the attack was always going to lean that way. The problem is not the number of seamers. It is that the one who wins sessions on his own is not on the plane
A series India could not afford to weaken
India play a practice match in Colombo from 7 August before the first Test at Galle on 15 August. The second is at the Sinhalese Sports Club in Colombo from 23 August
Both matches carry World Test Championship points India badly need. This cycle has already gone wrong for them, and a drawn series against a Sri Lanka side at home would do very little to fix it. Gill leads for the first time on a subcontinent tour of any real consequence, with KL Rahul as his deputy, and he does it a bowler short in the only department where Sri Lanka might have been vulnerable on days four and five
There is a version of this where the caution is the correct call whatever it costs in Galle. Bumrah is 32, his body has taken large pieces out of the last four years, and India go to New Zealand in November for Tests at Wellington and Christchurch, on pitches where a fit Bumrah is worth more than he is on a turner. Holding him back now might cost two Tests. Sending him could cost a good deal more than that
Stay across India’s tour of Sri Lanka
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