Bumrah’s fitness may create Test-captaincy conundrum

Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah at the SCG Nets (PC: Debasis Sen)

Amid the pyro of colours as the country celebrated Holi on Friday, an update on Jasprit Bumrah was a bit concerning. The fast bowler is said to be still recovering from the back injury that saw him miss the Champions Trophy. And he is set to be ruled out of the first few matches of the 2025 IPL as well. Bumrah is expected to join the Mumbai Indians squad by early April.

Bumrah is Indian cricket’s most valuable player by a distance and there’s no question of rushing him back. The medical team at the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru will not allow that. Without him, MI will have to make do in the first few games of the IPL that starts on March 22. In the grand scheme of things, however, there’s something that is far more important. Bumrah’s fitness can put the BCCI/selectors in a Test-captaincy quagmire.

Bumrah led India to a resounding win in the first Test against Australia in Perth, as Rohit Sharma took a leave of absence for the birth of his second child. Then, India lost two out of the next three Tests under Rohit’s charge and Bumrah had to assume the responsibility again in the final Test in Sydney, with the regular skipper standing himself down due to his poor form with the bat. A BCCI review meeting that followed the Australia tour, took a decision, according to sources, that Bumrah would be India’s red-ball captain in the next World Test Championship (WTC) cycle, starting in June with a five-match series in England.

Bumrah went down with a lower-back stress injury in Sydney and couldn’t bowl in the second innings. He is still recuperating from that and there’s no confirmation as regards his date of return. The 31-year-old underwent a back surgery in March 2023 and according to Shane Bond, the former New Zealand fast bowler who worked with Bumrah at MI as the team’s bowling coach, another injury at the same spot could be potentially career-ending. “You would be looking at five Tests in England, I would not want to be playing him in any more than two in a row,” Bond was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo. “That is 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 am not sure you can have surgery on that spot again,” he added.

From the selectors’ point of view, that queers the captaincy pitch. Workload management has become imperative to ensure that Bumrah’s career is not aborted abruptly. That would be an irreparable loss for Indian cricket. At the same time, someone who is unlikely to play all the matches in a series couldn’t be considered to lead the side.

This might force the BCCI to take a regressive step and retain Rohit as the Test skipper. His stock has risen after India’s Champions Trophy triumph. Also, a match-winning 76 off 83 balls against New Zealand in the final has given the 37-year-old (he will turn 38 on April 30) enough leeway to rubbish the retirement talk. But Test cricket in early summer England is a different ball game and picking Rohit for the tour of the Blighty and further burdening him with captaincy on the basis of his white-ball achievements could be fraught with serious risk.

As a batsman, Rohit has lost his defence and out there in the middle he resembles a blithe 16-hole golfer these days, aiming for the pin. Through over-hitting and under-hitting, sometimes he would eventually hit it. The approach is still serving him OK in the ODIs, but the red ball will move in the air and off the deck, and it might once again reduce Rohit to a walking wicket, a la the Australia series where he scored 31 runs in five innings at an average of 6.20. Before that in the home series against New Zealand, he had made 91 runs from six innings at an average 15.16, as India suffered a humiliating 3-0 whitewash.

A section in the BCCI seemingly wants Rohit to continue as the Test skipper. “The leadership of Rohit Sharma – all kudos to him, salute to him. It’s awesome. It’s wonderful,” cricket board vice-president Rajeev Shukla recently told reporters. Now, if the incumbent captain has the backing of the BCCI, then it would be very difficult, nigh-on impossible actually, for chief selector Ajit Agarkar and head coach Gautam Gambhir to initiate a change of guard.

That Shubman Gill is yet to establish himself as a Test batsman, especially in SENA (South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia) countries where his average is 26.72, might also work to Rohit’s advantage.