What happened to India's fast bowlers?

The text 'Not so long ago, Jasprit Bumrah led an exciting crop of pacers. But now, he stands alone. What's ailing pace bowling?' visible in the image is the drophead but was not extracted

- Rudraneil Sengupta

n 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.

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.