New Zealand Set An Example On How To Tackle Jasprit Bumrah: Shane Bond

Former Kiwi pacer Shane Bond has recently opened up on the India-New Zealand series. He discussed various takeaways from the series. India recently played New Zealand in a T20I and ODI series.

While the Men in Blue clean swept the Kiwis in the T20 series, the BlackCaps bounced back in the ODIs and whitewashed India. The visitors faced a rather shocking defeat by the hands of the Kiwis as they were whitewashed for the first time in 31 years since 1988-89.

A major factor behind India’s recent failure was poor individual performances. It was the poorest series in terms of statistics for Virat Kohli since he became the captain of the Indian National Cricket Team.

Another shocking performance came from the deadliest bowler in world cricket, Jasprit Bumrah. Bumrah went wicketless throughout the series and it was the first time such an incident took place since his debut.

Shane Bond Speaks Up On India’s Bowling Performances

“That’s the nature of expectations when you got a bowler of Jasprit’s quality. I thought New Zealand played him well and identified him as a risk. They have played him conservatively and obviously there was some inexperience around (Navdeep Saini and Shardul Thakur). All teams will now identify him as a risk and attack others. So that’s where the bowling group and what they do (as a group) is massive. It is not an easy place to bowl as wickets are flat,” Bond said.

But Bond felt Bumrah’s bowling wasn’t all that bad during the series, which India lost 0-3.

“At the end of the day, all you can do is try and bowl well. He bowled reasonably well but sometimes you don’t get wickets,” Bond said.

Bond has spent a considerable amount of time with Bumrah as the Mumbai Indians bowling coach in the IPL. He expects India’s premier strike bowler to have a “massive impact” on the two-Test series starting Friday in Wellington.

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