Jasprit Bumrah will miss India’s 2026 T20 World Cup opener against the USA on Saturday (February 7) at the Wankhede Stadium. Captain Suryakumar Yadav said at the toss that the ace pacer was ‘not well’.
A PTI report had earlier said that Bumrah skipped India’s training session on the eve of the match because he had a fever. The report said the team management wanted to take no risks with his fitness at this early stage in the tournament, where India have three more matches to play in the group stage.
India replaced Bumrah with Mohammed Siraj. The Hyderabadi was not even in the 15-member squad until a couple of days ago and was roped in only as a late replacement for Harshit Rana, who suffered a significant knee injury during India’s warmup against
South Africa and was ruled out of the competition entirely.
Further, the team also dropped Sanju Samson from the playing 11. Samson was the designated opener in the five-T20I series against New Zealand but failed to put up any impressive performances.
Ishan Kishan grabbed the opportunity in that series with a fifty and a century after being asked to bat at number three as a replacement for the injured Tilak Varma. The signs of him replacing Samson were there when he opened the innings and scored another half-century.
With Tilak back to his usual position, India have partnererd Kishan with Abhishek Sharma.
India’s playing 11: Ishan Kishan (wk), Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma, Suryakumar Yadav (c), Rinku Singh, Hardik Pandya, Shivam Dube, Axar Patel, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Siraj, and Varun Chakaravarthy
It was USA who won the toss and opted to field first.
“We were looking to bat first. It looks good here,” Suryakumar said. “I played a lot of cricket here. There’s a wind around as well, so I don’t think there’ll be a lot of dew later on. Of course there’ll be a little bit of pressure. We can’t run away from that fact, but then new tournament, we want to play the same way how we’ve been playing in the last one or two years and continue the same thing. It’s live before the game starts and I’m sure when we start batting, it will be more wilder. We have Washington Sundar missing out, Sanju Samson missing out. Unfortunately Jasprit Bumrah is not well so Mohammed Siraj is playing.”
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