Hopes on Shami if Bumrah misses Champions Trophy

The pace duo are brilliant in tandem, but a fit-again Shami will let India breathe easy going into the premier ODI event

- Somshuvra Laha

KOLKATA: If you had to pick three specialist fast bowlers in India's eleven, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Mohammed Siraj should be at the top of that very brief list. Very rarely do they bowl together though, and a lot of it is done by mandate.

Go back to the last ODI World Cup, the leadup to it specifically, where India had made it abundantly clear that they won't pick all their best bowlers at the same time. Two fast bowlers, two all-rounders (Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja) and a specialist spinner (mostly Kuldeep Yadav) was how they usually went about their business.

So successful was that formula that Shami's absence wasn't felt at all in the beginning, till Pandya was ruled out due to injury. Shami then ended as the tournament's highest wicket-taker with 24 scalps. None of that was unexpected, by the way. Pretty much after the 2015 World Cup, India realised that Shami is a no-go for round-the-year cricket. Similar terms and conditions applied to Bumrah's career even before it took off at international level. So, instead of being faced with the prospect of not having both Bumrah and Shami for an important tournament, India started planning their workloads in a way they always had one of them.