India's Pace Reserves Beyond Bhuvi-Bumrah: Are the Stocks Rich Enough?

When the squad was selected for the first two ODIs against West Indies, the pace bowling department was relatively inexperienced and lacked match practice. With two senior bowlers, Bhuvi and Bumrah rested, India had Umesh, Khaleel and Shami for the limited overs series.

Before the start of the ODI series, Khaleel had played just a two ODIs while Umesh and Shami were given sporadic chances to feature in the ODI squad in the recent past. However, all three were picked keeping in mind that India do need a regular third pacer, something which has been missing for quite a long time now, courtesy Bhuvi and Bumrah's brilliance and Hardik's rise.

However, with the World Cup nearing, and the recurring injuries to Bhuvi and Bumrah, the need for zeroing down on the backup pacers is being felt the most. The fact that India have still not figured out who the third pacer should be is a matter of concern, more so when the management have not been able to identify the set of pacers from which they could find the right option.

Bhuvi and Bumrah have been so good in the past couple of years that the need actually did not arise, but whenever they were rested or one or both got injured, this is what happened -

• 6 bowlers have been tried apart from Bhuvi, Bumrah and Hardik since the beginning of 2017.
• The 6 bowlers have played an aggregate of just 28 games in this period, with Umesh (12) the only one to play more than 5 games.
• Only Shami (5.6) and Khaleel (5.23) have economies below 6.
• Umesh has the highest wickets (18) but has an economy of 6.02.

What do these stats suggest?

The first thing that strikes is how the selectors and the management have failed to give players a longer run to prove themselves. There have actually been more rejections than selections, in the sense that players got selected only to get rejected after a couple of failures. And the options have not been able to gain the confidence and momentum and hence the numbers have not been impressive.

Siddharth Kaul, who was selected for the England tour, where the World Cup is set to take place, got chance in just 3 games and was dropped thereafter. Khaleel got to play in two Asia Cup games against Hong Kong and Afghanistan but was dropped after the first match against West Indies.

Shami has not got enough game time in limited overs cricket and has not been in the reckoning for long and suddenly, the likes of Chahar and Kaul, who were in the reckoning till last month, were replaced by Shami. Again, after just one game, Shami has been dropped for the next three matches.

Shami has played just 6 ODIs since the last World Cup

It is understandable that the management is in desperate need of the third pacer, but the method over the past years has been so wrong that the options now seem so scarce.

Quantitatively, there are a lot of options available, but experience or performance wise, there is hardly any option whom the management can rely on as of now. The constant chopping and changing shows the lack of clarity in the minds of the selectors as well as the management, which has also led to the lack of belief in the minds of the players.

With just 16 games remaining before the World Cup commences, the question remains, does India have the bench strength to tackle the situation in case of injury to Bhuvi/Bumrah? The answer is still in negative and that is probably the biggest headache going forward.