As India gets ready to face England in the first Test at Leeds, all eyes will be on Jasprit Bumrah. The 31-year-old pacer is back in international cricket after a fantastic IPL season with the Mumbai Indians and a injury layoff. He’s not just bringing his strong arm; he’s carrying the hopes of an Indian team in transition, missing big names like Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Ravichandran Ashwin.
The match starts on June 20 and it’ll be hard to see a Team India without those big players, though this new team has some exciting talent. Bumrah is called a “national treasure” by Virat and the team wants to keep him safe but it’s not clear how many Tests he will play. Skipper Shubman Gill and coach Gautam Gambhir kept quiet about it during the pre-departure press conference.
Unlike in the IPL, Bumrah won’t have seasoned bowlers like Trent Boult and Deepak Chahar alongside him. He will lead a younger pace attack comprising Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Arshdeep Singh and Akash Deep who have a total of 46 Tests between them—just one more than Bumrah’s own tally. All-rounders like Shardul Thakur or Nitish Kumar Reddy might take some of the workload off the main bowlers.
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Bumrah has a great record against England with 37 wickets in nine matches, average 23.78 and strike rate 51.9—the best among Indian bowlers in England. His best figures are 5/64 and he’s taken five wickets in a match twice. Interestingly he has gone wicketless only once in 15 innings against England at their home.
On his first tour to England in 2018, Bumrah took 14 wickets in three matches and helped India win by 203 runs at Nottingham. In his next tour in 2021-22, he led the bowling charts with 23 wickets in five matches and had best figures of 5/64. In the last Test at Edgbaston in 2022, though he made his captaincy debut in a losing match, he still showed his skills.
Overall Bumrah has 60 wickets against England at home and away with an average of 22.16. He’s going to England full of confidence after a series to remember in Australia where he took 32 wickets in five matches with an average of 13.06 and three five-wicket hauls.
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Bumrah is more than his numbers; he can swing the ball and nail those yorkers and is a handful for any batsman. He can take the weight of the nation’s hopes without breaking a sweat. If he gets another five-wicket haul, that’ll be ten in SENA countries (South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia)—a first for an Indian bowler. Another five wickets will also take him to 150 in SENA, another historic milestone.
