Indian bowling is lifeless without Jasprit Bumrah!

Without Jasprit Bumrah & Shami The Indian Test cricket team's bowling lineup appears to be an ordinary one. 

Jasprit Bumrah, who is the backbone of India’s bowling attack, without him, the Indian Test bowling unit seems lifeless and dull.

The over-dependency on Jasprit Bumrah is not good — neither for the Indian team nor for Bumrah himself.

This fast and unorthodox pacer had once single-handedly fought Australia in their own backyard representing India’s bowling attack. As a result, due to injuries, Bumrah had to miss out on the ICC Champions Trophy.

Despite having a visionary coach like Gautam Gambhir in the management, the Indian Test team is still lacking a bowler who can consistently bowl in the corridor of uncertainty just outside the off stump.

It's not that India doesn’t have bowlers — India has fast bowlers like Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Arshdeep Singh, Navdeep Saini, Avesh Khan, Harshit Rana, Khaleel Ahmed, Mukesh Kumar, and Anshul Kamboj — but either they haven’t been given proper opportunities or when they were given, they bowled like club-level bowlers and got thrashed by Australian and English batsmen.

Not just that, India’s team management has been so unimaginative that even today they haven’t been able to find a proper replacement for Ravichandran Ashwin or Ravindra Jadeja.

Be it the 2021 WTC final, July 2022 the Edgbaston Test after COVID where India had a chance to win the series 3-2, the 2023 WTC final  or the tour of Australia for BGT 2024-25 — in all these crucial moments, India's Test bowling looked flat and ineffective.

Cricket is a team game, and when the whole team doesn’t give its 100%, then individual efforts don't make much difference.

But if we look at the history of Indian bowling, among the most successful captains, the teams that won the 2024 T20 World Cup or the team expected to win the 2025 Champions Trophy — 60% of that squad was actually built during the era of former captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

Dhoni had stepped down from Test cricket in 2014 and white-ball captaincy in 2017, yet in the last 8 years, none of the captains or coaches who came after him paid attention to this fundamental weakness.

In fact, since 2019, India’s top-order batting has consistently failed in major matches, often crumbling. It was Rishabh Pant and Ravindra Jadeja who saved the face of Indian batting time and again.

What India needs is a diverse bowling unit — bowlers who can bowl like Josh Hazlewood, hitting a good length in the corridor of uncertainty. Prasidh Krishna has a good opportunity, but his indisciplined bowling is stopping him from becoming a big match-winner.

Test cricket is a format where the simpler you keep things, the better. But bowlers who emerge from the IPL furnace often fail to understand this and tend to overthink. Because of this, they end up bowling wayward lines and lengths.

India desperately needs a left-arm seamer in Test cricket — someone who can take advantage of helpful conditions and create angles for wickets. Two such options are Arshdeep Singh and Khaleel Ahmed. India also has an X-factor bowler in Harshit Rana, but due to his lack of red-ball and domestic experience, he is currently an indisciplined bowler. He needs to go back and bowl in domestic red-ball matches.

India also has disciplined bowlers like Mukesh Kumar and Anshul Kamboj, who can consistently bowl good lengths, but unfortunately, the Gambhir-led management hasn’t paid enough attention to them.

In the next two years, if the Indian management doesn’t focus on strengthening the weak bowling units in both Test and white-ball formats, the Indian team might face serious setbacks in major tournaments.

It’s not just about pace bowling — India also needs to think about replacements for Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel in the spin department. While Washington Sundar has emerged as a potential replacement for Ashwin, he will still need time to fully fill those shoes.

The years 2025 to 2027 will be crucial for Indian cricket. The good thing is that leadership is now in the responsible hands of someone like Gautam Gambhir. There is hope that he will lead the team out of this crisis and address these weaknesses with due attention.