The Indian Cricket Team in recent years has seen a lot of injury issues crop up and the tea management’s injury and workload management policies have in turn come under fire from the community. One such recent incident, involving the ace Indian pacer, Jasprit Bumrah and his inclusion in the Indian Test Playing XI, left the cricket experts divided in their opinions.
The things started to blow up after Virat Kohli, the captain of the Indian team, during the toss of the second test match of the Indian team against England, on Saturday, announced that Jasprit Bumrah has not been included in the team, citing his workload management as the reason behind his exclusion. As insignificant as it may seem, this exclusion of Bumrah caused a lot of ripples in the cricketing circles.
While on air for covering the ongoing Test match between Indian and England, the two legendary Indian batsmen, Gautam Gambhir and Sunil Gavaskar, expressed their differing opinions, on two separate instances. Gambhir supported the decision taken by Virat Kohli and the Indian team management, and Gavaskar stood in complete disagreement of the move, as he cited his point of view, slamming this decision.
‘I think it is a good decision to rest him’ – Gautam Gambhir
“You don’t rest your number one bowler in the name of workload management. Jasprit Bumrah is India’s number one bowler with the new ball, while Ravichandran Ashwin is the number one spinner. When you have lost the opening game of such a crucial series, you can’t rest your number one pacer. I am baffled by Bumrah’s snub, as there is a seven-day recovery time after the second Test match,” said Sunil Gavaskar, as reported by Sportskeeda.
Speaking about the matter, on another show, around the same time, was Gautam Gambhir, who said,’ I think it is a good decision to rest him. He will be ready to go in the pink-ball Test match. There is nothing for the fast bowlers here, and he has bowled a lot of overs in Australia and the first Test match, so I think it was a very good decision from the team management’s point of view.”
It can be left to anyone to draw their own opinions about this incident and choose sides if they want to, but one thing that can be deduced from this turn of events is that there is an effort being put in from the side of the Indian cricket administrators to handle the workloads of the prime players in a more organised and structured way.
