Bumrah Set to Be Rested for Afghanistan Test After IPL
Jasprit Bumrah almost certainly won’t play the one-off Test against Afghanistan next month. The BCCI is expected to rest him after the IPL, and the fact that the June 6 game in Mullanpur carries no World Test Championship points makes the decision pretty straightforward.
There’s a bigger picture here. India need Bumrah fit for what comes after — Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Australia — and squeezing him into a dead rubber doesn’t make sense. The plan is for him to play nine Tests in the current WTC cycle and this isn’t one of them.
Siraj’s case is less clear. The selectors are waiting on workload reports before making a call on him and Prasidh Krishna. In practice, the Afghanistan Test looks like it’ll be used to get a look at some of the fringe bowlers rather than field anyone India actually needs to protect.