Former India cricketer Manoj Tiwary didn’t mince his words in a recent interview when he questioned the decision to pick Jasprit Bumrah for a Test series he never intended to complete. India management had signalled early on that Bumrah, recovering from a back injury and workload concerns, would feature in just three of the five Tests against England. Yet Tiwary argued that this transparency played into England’s hands. His argument rests on one clear point: no cricketer, irrespective of stature, is bigger than the game.
‘Bumrah shouldn’t have been selected; no player above country’
“See, when you know there are a couple of things which has happened in England which I thought we missed a trick as far as our strategy is concerned. So first of all, in my opinion, if a player is not fit for a five-Test series, when you know beforehand, then obviously, you will not pick that individual,” Tiwary told CricTracker, driving home his point that no cricketer, however high-profile, is greater than the game itself.
For Tiwary, the issue is less about Bumrah’s performances and more about the principle. The pacer still finished with 14 wickets in three matches. “Because no one is bigger than the game of cricket. And it should be told to everyone, irrespective of whether he’s Jasprit Bumrah, whether it is Virat Kohli or Rohit Sharma, or anyone in this world. No one is bigger than the game of cricket,” he added.
The ‘Workload’ of Bumrah
The reality, however, is that India didn’t stumble into this situation blindly. Gautam Gambhir, before the series even began, admitted that Bumrah would be managed carefully after his comeback from a serious back injury. The medical staff and selectors were never looking at him as a five-Test workhorse.
‘Workload management’ has become a buzzword in modern cricket which is sometimes mocked, often misunderstood. But with Bumrah, it’s not abstract. He’s India’s most valuable fast bowler across formats, and pushing him through a gruelling Test series risked aggravating an injury that had already robbed him of months in the past. We all saw what happened at the end of the Border Gavaskar Trophy. In fact, India went on to win the two Tests Bumrah missed, showing the bench strength Tiwary himself referred to.
“If the team management knows or the selector knows that he’s not going to survive for five Tests on a trot, he should not be picked,” he argued. “But when you know you have a bench strength, when you have a pool of fast bowlers who are really doing well, then obviously he should not have been picked in the first place.”
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