Jasprit Bumrah likely to play all matches in remainder of India's WTC campaign as BCCI sets sights on 2027: Report

The Board of Control for Cricket in India is pushing for senior pacer Jasprit Bumrah to play the entire ICC World Test Championship cycle despite concerns over his fitness and workload. With more than a month having passed since India's historic triumph in the T20 World Cup on home soil and with the WTC final and the ODI World Cup set to take place next year, the board has already started drawing plans for the future.

And Bumrah's workload is expected to expected to form a crucial part of the team's planning for the two major events taking place next year.

'Challenge will be to keep him fresh'

According to a report on The Times of India, the BCCI wants Bumrah to play each of the remaining nine Tests in the ongoing WTC cycle, which concludes in March next year. India return to the Test arena with a one-off Test against Afghanistan, but that is not part of the current WTC cycle, and Bumrah is expected to be exempted from it.

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The Shubman Gill-led side will then play two Tests each against Sri Lanka and New Zealand later this year, both away from home, before hosting Australia in a marquee five-Test series for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy early next year.

"The attempt is to keep Bumrah fit enough to play all Tests. He is expected to play the four Tests in Sri Lanka and New Zealand. The challenge will be to keep him fresh for the five Tests at home against Australia. The selectors won’t mind resting him for some ODI series. He played T20 cricket after a gap of two years in the Asia Cup last Septemer and still delivered," a BCCI source was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

Bumrah might be asked to play Afghanistan Test for 'match practice'

And though he is expected to give the one-off Test against Afghanistan a miss, the board might still ask him to play the game in order to get some valuable match practice.

"The idea is to get serious about Tests. The Afghanistan Test may be outside the WTC cycle but there’s nothing like match practice. The top players will be assessed and a call on them will be taken accordingly," the source added.

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India had finished runners-up in the first two WTC seasons in 2021 and 2023 respectively, and had finished third in the 2023-25 cycle following a string of losses towards the end. And with the team precariously placed at sixth on the table in the current cycle, the team management will be hopeful of securing Bumrah's participation in each of the remaining Tests.

Bumrah's unique action puts a lot of stress on his back, due to which he has had recurring injuries on this part of the body and even had to undergo a surgery in 2023. The Gautam Gambhir-led support staff was then forced to carefully manage Bumrah's workload during the tour of England last summer, in which the senior pacer had only played three out of five matches for the inaugural Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy.