India bowling coach Paras Mhambrey on Bumrah, workload management, Ashwin and Jaiswal

India bowling coach Paras Mhambrey admitted absence of Jasprit Bumrah has been felt within the team recently. With a packed schedule in the next few months, he said workload management of the bowlers will be pivotal.

“If we look at the last 1-1.5 years Bumrah is one player we missed a lot,” he said after India’s win over the West Indies in the first Test.

When asked about giving breaks to the bowlers he said, “As of now, there haven’t been any discussions on who will play white ball and who will play red ball but going forward we have to give breaks to individual bowlers. The moment we give a break to a bowler we can bring another one which will create bench strength.”

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“A lot of other bowlers like Mukesh (Kumar) who have done well in Ranji cricket and bowlers who have been also part of the team like Avesh Khan and Arshdeep Singh there will be an opportunity to work with them,” he added.

India would need to keep rotating the squad with Asia Cup and World Cup to come later in the year.

“Workload management is one of the important things we have been working on it for the last couple of years obviously we have missed Bumrah and Prasidh (Krishna) who have been part of the set-up. We have learnt from that looking at the schedule we have ahead we play a lot of different formats in that sense workload management will be important. A lot of discussion has been going on with the captain and in the team management as well,” he said.

Going into the West Indies series, the Indian fast bowling options had taken just 88 wickets between them with Mohammed Siraj accounting for 52 of them. In the absence of injured Bumrah and rested Mohammed Shami, India called up Mukesh.

“He is a very interesting talent one thing is he is coming on the back of a lot of hard work and performance. He knows the value of himself. We have been following his performance for the last couple of years and how he has been performing in the Ranji Trophy,” Mhambrey said.

‘Ashwin one of India’s greatest match winners’

Ashwin took 12 wickets during the first Test in Dominica with five and seven wickets in each inning. His astounding figures saw India win by an innings and 141 runs.

“As a team we realise how valuable R Ashwin is. In my opinion he is one the greatest match winner for India. There have been very few match-winners like him. The number of matches he has helped us win what can I say,” Mhambrey said.

The spin combination of Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja took 17 of the 20 wickets – which didn’t surprise Mhambrey.

“When we came here on Day 1, it was a bit dry and when we checked the stats of the local games we found out that spinners dominated in those games. We felt as the game progresses it will be difficult for batting and the other thing is how we use the wicket.

“They have batted and we have batted as well and there were situations where teams could have batted for longer periods which we did. That created the base for the bowlers to later come and perform. The way Ashwin and Jadeja came on later and bowled is praiseworthy,” he said.

Player of the Match Yashasvi Jaiswal scored a 171 run knock on his Test debut. Mhambrey labelled his knock as ‘fabulous’ especially on a track that was slow and got slower as the game progressed.

“The way he has batted is fabulous. I thought for a debutant to come in and not on an easy wicket obviously it was a slow wicket it got slower as the game progressed the stroke-making wasn’t easy. If you look at his batting earlier he is the kind of guy who likes to take on the game but the way he applied himself on that wicket is very good to see,” Mhambrey said.

“That is what is needed at the international level you must be able to adapt to different conditions and positions and most importantly that was expected by the team and he did the role for the team which is definitely very heartening to see. The performance he gave here will give him a lot of confidence going ahead.”