After Bumrah, who? The search for India's next generation of fast bowlers

In October last year, when New Zealand came visiting for a Test series in India, captain Rohit Sharma spoke about the necessity to create a strong pool of fast bowlers. “We want to create a bench strength where tomorrow if anything happens to anyone, we are not worried, and we don’t want to be worried or too heavily reliant on a few individuals. That’s not the right thing to do,” Sharma said a day before the first Test in Bengaluru.

“It’s not about three or four options. We want to try and do that like, you know, when it comes to batting, there are a lot of options. We want to create the same with the bowlers as well.”

To put his words into action, the team included fast bowlers Harshit Rana and Mayank Yadav and fast-bowling all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy as reserves for the three-Test series. Roughly two months later, Rana, 24, and Reddy, 21, were making their Test debuts for India; that too, at the biggest stage possible, the Border Gavaskar Trophy in Australia, which features inarguably the fiercest rivalry in Test cricket right now. 

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Rana’s debut, in the first Test at Perth, went reasonably well, as the pacer picked up four wickets, three of those in the first innings, in a winning cause. The euphoria was short-lived: he went wicketless in the second Test in Adelaide, and did not get to play again in the five-Test series.

Reddy’s introduction had more heft; he was one of the finds of the series, but mostly because of his fearless, skilled batting. The bowling was just about good enough to back up the primary attackers, but he won’t feature as the main draw. 

Yadav, who has bowled some of the fastest deliveries ever bowled by an Indian in the IPL—he clocks in at above 155 kmph—is the quickest of the trio, which also makes him more susceptible to injuries, and indeed it’s injuries that has kept him out of the India squad.

Which brings us to one of the two glaringly obvious truths about Indian cricket that was revealed at the Border Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) series loss (the first time in a decade for India): One, the time is up for the two stalwarts of Indian batting, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, and two, that Jasprit Bumrah, who stands head and shoulders above everyone else as the world’s best fast bowler, is alone as the country’s only serious fast bowler in Test cricket. 

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Mohammed Siraj, who picked up a decent 20 wickets in the series, was also wayward and leaked far too many runs, something that has become a habit for him in the recent past. Meanwhile, Mohammed Shami, who partnered Bumrah so brilliantly over the last five or six years, is nearing the end of his career and is anyway plagued with injuries.

This is worrying news for Indian cricket, which had witnessed a revolution in fast bowling in the last decade, and rose to become the pre-eminent team in the cricketing world since the emergence of Bumrah in 2016, because of the critical role played by an unprecedented generation of quick bowlers. 

To understand how things have come to the present low, it is necessary to look at the main reason behind the transformation of fast bowling in India, because these are two sides of the same coin.

The one clear factor behind the sudden eruption of bowlers who can hit 150 kmph is the emergence of the Indian Premier League (IPL) as cricket’s most popular and most lucrative event. Before the IPL, an Indian bowler who could hit 150 kmph happened so rarely that it was an anomaly. Fast bowling was not something Indian cricket could rely on; in fact, it was often the weakest link in a culture saturated with batting greats and spinning legends. 

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But the IPL was the perfect platform for every amped-up skill in cricket—the biggest hitters, the quickest bowlers, the wiliest spinners, the most acrobatic fielders. Here was a three-month money carnival desperately looking for talent like that for its many teams every year. The IPL also offered, for the first time in Indian cricket, a superb scouting network, and a brief but critical exposure to world-class coaching and playing environments for those picked through the network.

Bumrah himself was a product of the IPL, having played little domestic cricket when he was spotted by former India coach John Wright for Mumbai Indians and fast-tracked to greatness. Siraj has a similar story, as do scores of others—Yadav, Akash Deep (who also got a chance but failed to impress at the BGT), Navdeep Saini, Kartik Tyagi, Umran Malik, Avesh Khan, Mukesh Choudhary and others. 

But while the IPL is great at unearthing quick bowlers, it’s brief timeline and the fact that it’s a T20 tournament means that the bowlers need a different platform if they have to truly develop their skills, and strengthen the endurance muscle that is so important for Test cricket.

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Former Australian cricketer Brad Hogg put it in perspective. Speaking about Yadav’s struggles with injury on his YouTube channel, Hogg said: “I’m looking at his (Yadav’s) First-Class stat, he’s only played one FC game. So, he hasn’t played too much of the longer format as well. I think it’s just sheer pace with Mayank Yadav. There are a couple of other bowlers that are very similar to him…sometimes, they are thinking right, just bowl sheer pace, if I can get an IPL contract, I’m happy. The end.” Hogg went on to lament the fact that such bowlers don’t learn to play Test cricket, and that they don’t know how to bowl “within themselves”.

This blame is certainly not just for the bowlers to take. While India used to be a terrible country in which to be a fast bowler—for decades, it had only one dedicated coaching centre for quicks, the MRF Pace Academy, while the Indian cricketing infrastructure lacked the sports science-based exercise and medical support so crucial for the physiologically demanding act of fast bowling—all of these have changed in the last decade.

One thing that has changed very little is the nature of most cricket pitches in the country. With the exception of Dhramshala, most pitches in India are simply a grind with little reward for fast bowlers.

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How do the bowlers keep themselves motivated and learn the skills for the long haul if they can’t do it in domestic cricket? What good is playing First Class cricket if all you are going to be is fodder for batters?

A look at any of the recent (and not-so-recent) Ranji records shows a clear picture of what kind of bowler bosses First Class cricket in India: In the ongoing 2024-25 season, the highest wicket-taker is Vidarbha’s slow left armer Harsh Dubey, in the 2023-24 season it was Tamil Nadu’s slow left armer R. Sai Kishore, in 2022-23 the gentle offbreak of Kerala’s Jalaj Saxena netted the most wickets, and in 2021-22, it was the slow left arm balls of Maharashtra’s Shams Mulani.

The BCCI made a bold and much needed move to bolster the newly mined fast bowling riches by introducing a “Fast Bowler’s Contract”—a retainership given to five promising bowlers (same as a “Grade C” contract, or ₹1 crore annually), who will also go through specialised training and rehabilitation at the BCCI’s new National Cricket Academy. 

 This is a “much needed” move according to former India bowling coach Bharat Arun, but unless the bowlers have a year-long competitive environment in which to showcase and develop their skills, India’s pacers will miss the most important factor in their development.

Rudraneil Sengupta is the author of Enter the Dangal, Travels through India’s Wrestling Landscape.

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