Zaheer Feels India Has Sufficient Bowling Reserve

Veteran Indian pacer Zaheer Khan believes that the visitors in the ongoing England-India series have sufficient bench strength to cope with the injury to the front lineup.

Cricket news: Even Tendulkar has agreed India’s current bowling attack is the most complete in recent years

The 39-year-old pacer, who was part of the 2007 squad which won the Test series in England after 21 years, believes that India can make up some part of the series without injured pacers Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah.

India has recently named the squad for the three Tests which will begin from August 1 at Edgbaston. The squad features names like Ishant Sharma, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav and Shardul Thakur besides Bumrah, who had missed the T20I and ODI series due to finger surgery.

Khan, who had played between the 2000-2014 period, had featured in 92 Tests and had taken 311 wickets in the longer format of the game.

He recently spoke to First Post that, “Bumrah is injured for the first few matches and there has been an injury concern to Bhuvneshwar Kumar, which is a concern seeing the forthcoming season, but I believe even after their injuries, the five-match tournament is a long series.”

“I believe whichever bowlers will play – like Umesh (Yadav) is doing well, Ishant (Sharma) is a senior bowler and has to take more lead (role) and Mohammed Shami has a good record – I believe their (Bhuvi and Bumrah’s) absence will be felt, but still India’s bench strength is very strong,” Zaheer added.

Bhuvneshwar was gambled in the third ODI against England in spite of his injury, which has led to a further worse condition.

Khan was being interviewed while he came to inaugurate the Kanakia Monsoon Marathon Challenge in Mumbai along with his wife, actress Sagarika Ghatge, at the Bandra-Kurla Complex on Sunday (July 22) morning.

Khan also agreed with what Sachin Tendulkar had said about the Indian bowling attack that it is the most complete attack of India in recent years.

Khan also said that India needs to improve on its consistency to get a good result and hoped that this season ‘it will be an Indian summer’, having witnessed the recent conditions.

India had previously toured in England for Test matches in 2011 and 2014, where they lost the series 1-3 and 0-4 respectively.