India's top speed bowler Jasprit Bumrah has been officially released from the team for the current fifth and last Test of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy against England at The Oval, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) confirmed on Friday. This is being done as part of a workload management plan.
Bumrah, who was not part of the playing XI for the Test, was missing from the team bus coming to the stadium for Day 2.
"Mr Jasprit Bumrah has been released from India's team for the fifth Test of the series against England. The fifth and last Test of the series is being played at Kennington Oval, London," read the statement of the BCCI.
Both head coach Gautam Gambhir and chief selector Ajit Agarkar had already stated before that Bumrah would only feature in no more than three games in the five-Test series because of persistent workload management. Based on this, Bumrah played the first Test at Headingley, then the third at Lord's, and the fourth at Old Trafford.
In his three games, Bumrah gave an exemplary performance, taking 14 wickets with two fifer returns. He bowled 119.4 overs at a figure of 26, making him India's leading wicket-taker in the series to date.
With his solid performance notwithstanding, Bumrah's non-selection in the third Test left eyebrows raised. While explaining the reason behind it, India's assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate said on Day 1, "We want to wheel him out, certainly, but we also want to respect where his body is at, and on the basis of that, we just felt that it wasn't worth including him in the squad.". He has bowled a huge amount of overs, I know it doesn't always look like that because he's only appeared in three tests and he's only bowled in one Manchester innings.
He further said, "But if you consider the loads, he has bowled a huge number of overs, and as he did mention before starting this tour, he was going to be available for three games, and we simply felt that it was right on that decision."
India's Squad for Fifth Test at The Oval:
Shubman Gill (Captain), KL Rahul (Vice-Captain), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sai Sudharsan, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Karun Nair, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel (Wicketkeeper), Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Kuldeep Yadav, Anshul Kamboj, Arshdeep Singh, and N Jagadeesan (Wicketkeeper).
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