According to head coach Mahela Jayawardene, Jasprit Bumrah lost his “sharpness” due to a niggle he carried from this year’s T20 World Cup into the current IPL season, even though the Mumbai Indians gave him adequate time to recover.
Due to his diminished efficacy, Bumrah has only taken four wickets in 13 games for MI. According to Jayawardene, the 32-year-old was battling an unidentified injury earlier in the 2026 Indian Premier League.
“(It is due to) a combination of a few things. Coming back from the (T20) World Cup, he had a slight niggle which he played with through the World Cup, so we gave him adequate rest to come back,” PTI quoted Jayawardene telling reporters on the eve of their last game in this IPL against Rajasthan Royals.
In fact, just five days before the IPL began on March 28, MI permitted the India internationals in their lineup—Bumrah, captain Hardik Pandya, Suryakumar Yadav, and Tilak Varma—to attend the preseason camp. After a fierce campaign, India had successfully defended their title in Ahmedabad.
According to Jayawardene, Bumrah’s slower pace in the early going of the season was due to the pacer’s attempt at a “gradual build-up.”
“(In) the first 4-5 games, it was a gradual build-up for him to get over that niggle he had. You could see the pace was dropped because of that, and now he’s back to his pace. The last 4-5 games have been good.
“But obviously, when you’re going through something like that, you do lose a little bit of sharpness of execution and all that because you’re fighting something else. But I think health-wise, it’s 100 per cent (but it is) unfortunate that the season is (now) over for us,” Jayawardene said.
Bumrah, who played in four of India’s five bilateral series matches against New Zealand before to the T20 World Cup, has had a difficult season.
Bumrah participated in eight of India’s nine T20 World Cup matches and finished as the team’s joint leading wicket-taker with Varun Chakravarthy (14 wickets, including a 4/15 in the final against New Zealand).
Despite Bumrah’s difficulties, the rival teams have played cautiously against him, according to the former captain of Sri Lanka.
“The teams have not taken too much risk against him in certain situations. They’ve played him out because we haven’t been able to create pressure around him as well, in the sense that the other bowlers haven’t been able to create that pressure that we needed to,” he said.
According to Jayawardene, MI made an effort to accommodate Bumrah’s workload.
“(We have had) good conversations, and Bumrah is very experienced now. It was a collective conversation with his training staff, like where do we push him and how do we — there was workload management as well — how much he could bowl in nets in preparation,” Jayawardene said.
“Initially, we tried to tactically also bowl him in situations so that he’s not under pressure. But being the lead bowler, he was always under pressure, like bowling at the death. But we used him in different ways this season so that it gives him a bit more freedom. But he understands that; he comes back and he smiles and says, ‘coach, it didn’t work, let’s try something different kind of thing’.”
Bumrah is back to his best, according to Jayawardene, and there are no longer any serious issues.
“But I wouldn’t worry about Booms, I think he’s in good spirit and he will come back strong. We all learn from these kind of seasons and manage all that. But one thing for sure, there’s no doubt in the effort that he put in during these six or eight weeks to get back to where he should be,” he said.
“The last few games, he was top notch. He was all back again, bowling that 140 kmph mark, he was nailing the yorkers. He had a few issues with his run-up, purely because it was with the niggle that he had.”
Bumrah has also been focusing on his no-ball issues this season, according to Jayawardene.
“He was bowling quite a few no-balls this season, if you remember — that has to do with the build-up, so that is something that he again went back and worked on. Whenever we had long breaks, he was working on that.”
“I can’t take anything away from his work ethic and what he puts off the field. It’s just that it didn’t happen on the field. But we’ve had good conversations and we know what we need to do. We tried, but it didn’t work. But we just need to move on from that,” he said.
