Jasprit Bumrah Accused Of Not Being Committed To India: 'Played Entire IPL, Not Keen To...'

Former India cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar has questioned Jasprit Bumrah’s commitment to Indian cricket, alleging that the senior pacer picks and chooses which international matches he plays. Manjrekar said Bumrah should have made himself available for the T20I series against England and Ireland, saying he could have ‘handled the workload’ of the matches, having played the entire IPL 2026 season.

Manjrekar’s remarks seemed based on the assumption that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had no role in resting Bumrah for the seven T20Is in Europe, while naming him in the Asian Games squad. However, chief selector Ajit Agarkar clearly said in his press conference that he wanted Bumrah to be fit for ODIs and World Test Championship (WTC)

Test matches as he could ‘always be brought back’ for T20s.

But Manjrekar said performances in Asian Games or even the Olympics won’t matter much in cricket, which, according to him, is a sport of bilaterals and World Cups.

“Bumrah is somebody… I’m just confused about how his career is going in terms of his availability. I did an Insta post yesterday. I thought Bumrah was the frontrunner to become India’s T20 captain because I thought he could handle the T20 workload,” he said on the Sony Sports Network.

“But it seems like he’s not very keen to play every game that India plays. So here is a guy who actually rests for [certain] India games and keeps himself fit for certain India games. So it’s a very different approach, something that I don’t understand. I just wish that he would commit himself more to India. I can understand the workload he feels for Test cricket; 50 overs of cricket is extremely demanding. But considering that he played the entire IPL, I thought he would be able to take the workload of a few T20 matches in Ireland and England,” Manjrekar added.

However, according to the Mumbai Indians, Bumrah missed the first few matches in IPL 2026 because he bowled in the 2026 T20 World Cup with a niggle that had to be carefully managed.

Manjrekar concluded by saying that Bumrah would have had the captaincy in Tests and T20s had he wanted it, adding that it went ‘prematurely’ to Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer, respectively.