The replacement for injured pacer Jasprit Bumrah won’t be announced any time soon by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Instead, the board has decided to send Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Shami, and Mohammed Siraj as soon as possible to Australia. The BCCI has given team management the freedom to choose who they want to bring.
According to a BCCI source, the team management, specifically captain Rohit Sharma and coach Rahul Dravid, will evaluate these players before making a decision.
Before making a decision, the team management wanted to meet with every player. After Deepak Chahar’s injury, we had to send more names as standby substitutes since Shami was already on the call. A BCCI official added, So we approached team management, and they felt that let all players fly to Australia and they will evaluate the guys and take a decision on it.
On October 23 in Melbourne, India will play Pakistan in the opening match of the T20 World Cup.
In the final month before the World Cup, the management of the Indian team experienced several shocks. The first player to be declared out due to a knee ailment was all-arounder Ravindra Jadeja. The biggest setback, Bumrah’s back ailment, was announced to the team management a few weeks before the flight to Australia. Deepak Chahar afterward had back and hip injuries and was taken urgently to Bengaluru’s National Cricket Academy.
Despite Bumrah’s injury, the team still has adequate strength, according to former India coach Ravi Shastri, who supported the inclusion of Shami as Bumrah’s substitute.
We have a solid team and I believe we have adequate power. I’ve always thought that if we advance to the semifinals, the tournament might belong to anyone. The goal would be to get off to a strong start, go to the semifinals, and then have enough strength to likely win the (World) Cup. The absence of Bumrah and Jadeja hurts the team, but it also presents a chance to find a new champion, Shastri said in Chennai at the inauguration of his coaching partnership with former India bowling coach Bharat Arun and former India fielding coach R Sridhar.
Shastri expressed regret about Bumrah’s injury. Cricket is played so regularly that injuries do occur. You are powerless to prevent the injury.
Shami has only participated in 17 T20Is since making his debut in the competition against Pakistan in 2014, but he has had a strong ODI performance in Australia, where he has taken 22 wickets at an average of 26.63. He also has the fourth-most wickets taken in the 2015 World Cup in Australia.