The Indian cricket team have officially now qualified for the World Test Championship 2021-2023 Final after beating Australia in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and also getting a helping hand from New Zealand.
The Indian cricket team led by Rohit Sharma won the 2023 Border-Gavaskar Trophy Test series against Australia and have also confirmed qualification for back-to-back World Test Championship Final to be played in Oval in June later this year.
The Indian won the series 2-1 and draw the 4th Test match. However, a draw wouldn’t have been enough for Rohit Sharma’s men to qualify for the final, they needed a helping hand from New Zealand who either need to draw or win the 1st Test match against Sri Lanka, which they did in the very last ball of the match.
3 pace bowlers who could replace Jasprit Bumrah in the Indian team for World Test Championship 2023 Final vs Australia
Now that the Indian team have qualified and given that the conditions will be completely opposite to what India plays in India, it is a tough decision to make as to who are players gonna be who will play in the World Test Championship (WTC) Final that they will play against Australia.
England’s conditions have always been mostly favourable for pace bowling and both India and Australia have some great pacers. However, Team India main pacer Jasprit Bumrah has been ruled out for couple of months due to injury. As such, the big question remains as to who will be his replacement. Today in this article, we take a look at 3 players who could Jasprit Bumrah’s replacement for the World Test Championship 2023 Final. (Note that, we feel Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav are certain to be part of the team so we have not selected them).
Mohammed Siraj
After making his debut in the year 2020, the year 2021 was a breakthrough year for the Hyderabad pacer. In 2022, he was also influencial with the ball and has great talent to be the like for like replacement of Bumrah. The year 2023 has not been so good for him in Test cricket, played in the first 3 matches of the series vs Australia, however, it was mainly a spinner dominated series. All in, Siraj has that lethalness in that kind of makes him the perfect replacement of Bumrah.
Umran Malik
Should India be willing to take risk by bringing in a young pace bowler as Jasprit Bumrah’s replacement, then no other bowler would be perfect replacement than Umran Malik. With England’s pitches supporting pace bowling, Umran Malik is capable of bowling at 150 KMPH consistently. Umran has not yet played Test cricket but we all know the quality that he brings to the table. However, it is unlikely that the team will go for an untested asset.
Jaydev Unadkat
Jaydev Unadkat made a tremendous comeback to the Indian team recently. Despite he was written off quickly in his career, he made a comeback into the Indian team once again with his brilliant performance in the domestic cricket in India for Saurashtra. He was included in the Indian team for the series vs Bangladesh last year and made his debut in the 2nd and the final match of the series. He was also part of the Indian team in the Test series vs Australia, however was released by the BCCI to allow him to play the Ranji Trophy final, which his won thanks to another brilliant performance from him.
At the end, we just wanna add that it is also likely that none of the players mentioned above would make it into the team and it could be another player, this is just a prediction based on the squad selection recently.