India’s vice-captain Jasprit Bumrah felt that a day-night Test required a lot of mental adjustments to be made.
“As children growing up and as players who have played a lot of First Class cricket, you don’t see much [of pink-ball cricket],” Bumrah said, on Thursday. “There are mental adjustments to be made, in catching the pink ball, bowling with it and batting against it.
“In a normal Test, there will be more swing in the morning. Here nothing may happen at the start because it is in the afternoon and there might be a lot of swing in the evening.
“For a morning start, we train early in the day because it suits our sleep patterns and here, we finish late in the night and that is another adjustment. From whatever little number of games we have played, we are trying to take feedback.”
In the two pink-ball Tests that have been played in India thus far, pacers took 19 of 20 wickets in Kolkata against Bangladesh in 2019, and it was the turn of the spinners to do the same against England last year.
Bumrah was understandably tight-lipped about the bowling composition, even as he welcomed spinner Axar Patel back into the fold.
“Axar was a part of the squad before too and when he is fit, he jumps back straight in,” he said. “He brings a lot of value with the bat, ball and in the field. There will be a discussion on what combination we want to have and how we go about it.”
Axar was accommodated in the squad in place of Kuldeep Yadav and Bumrah said it was not a case of dropping the left-arm unorthodox bowler on performance.
“Kuldeep was not dropped. It is just that he was in the bubble for a long time and when you are not playing that much, it can get tough. It was important that he spent some time with his family before he enters the IPL bubble, which will be for another two months. It was done with concern for his mental well-being.”
