By Chanakya
Indian Pacer Jasprit Bumrah has been ruled out of Champions Trophy 2025. Bumrah has suffered a lower-back injury during the Border-Gavaskar Trophy earlier this year. Harshith Rana who has impressed everyone with his exceptional bowling skills in the ongoing ODI series against England was named as the replacement. This will be the second time in the last five years where Bumrah missed out on an ICC tournament,with the previous scenario being the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia.
Bumrah’s absence will create a major impact on the bowling line-up. The bowling-maestro was the Player of the Tournament for India in the 2023 ODI World cup. Bumrah’s performance had been rated highly as one of the greatest individual performances in the BGT series. The yorker-king had finished with 32 wickets under his umbrella with an average of 13.06. Bumrah’s unique action has been a huge impact for his exceptional bowling skill but injuries kept on troubling him. In 2019,September Bumrah faced a major injury concern on his lower back which forced him not to participate in any tournaments for a period of 3 months. In the year 2022,he was again forced to sit out for the Asia Cup in August. Following that year,he suffered a back spasm and had to miss the T20 World Cup. He missed out on the sport for 10 months and later returned as captain for a T20 series against Ireland.
Bumrah was awarded the ICC Men’s Cricketer of the Year 2024. He was also honoured with Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for his outbreaking performance in the previous year. His unique bowling action and exceptional yorkers have troubled batsmen for a long time. Eight teams are split into two from either roster for qualifying for the Champions trophy 204 semi-finals India, hosts Pakistan, New Zealand and Bangladesh are part of Group A while Australia, England, South Africa and Afghanistan are part of Group B.
Board of Cricket Control in India have included the mystery leg-break googly spinner Varun Chakravarthy in the squad who replaced opening batsman Yashasvi Jaiswal who was originally part of the provisional team Jaiswal, Mohd. Siraj and Shiwam Dube were named as travelling substitutes India begins their Champions Trophy campaign on 20th February against Bangladesh and later takes on their old-time rivals Pakistan 23rd of February India’s revised Squad for 2025 Champions Trophy: Rohit Sharma ( C ), Shubman Gill ( VC ), Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul ( wk ), Rishabh Pant ( wk ). Ravindra Jadeja, Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Kuldeep Yadav, Harshith Rana, Mohd.Shami, Arshdeep Singh, Varun Chakravarthy.