Shardul Thakur has proved he can be an all-rounder, says Bharat Arun

Arun also spoke about workload management of India's six pacers on England tour.

Indian team’s bowling coach Bharat Arun has opined that Mumbai and India pacer Shardul Thakur has proved his abilities as an all-rounder. Arun even said that he is the one, the Indian team is looking for since Hardik Pandya's back injury has restricted his role with the ball.

"It is more of a selectors' job to find them and then we can develop those all-rounders. Shardul has proved he can be an all-rounder. What he did in Australia was fabulous," Arun was quoted by PTI.

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Shardul made his Test debut for India against West Indies in 2018, but then had a re-debut of sorts against Australia down under in 2021. He scored a brilliant half-century in Brisbane and picked 7 wickets as well as India registered a historic win and beat Australia in a Test series in Australia for the second time in a row.

Hardik Pandya last played Test cricket for India in 2018 during the tour of England. He has been battling a back injury since 2019 and recently, during the IPL, also picked up a shoulder niggle. Arun agreed that finding someone as good as Pandya would be a very tough job.

"I wish you could just wish and develop bowlers like that. Hardik is an outstanding talent, but unfortunately, he had to undergo a back operation, and then it's not very easy to come back after that. He bowled against England, I thought he did a really good job. But to sustain that, we need to manage him well and build on his strength," Arun said.

India has six pacers in the squad -- Ishant Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Thakur, and Mohammad Siraj. Arun said all six fast bowlers will be rotated during the tour as the team manages its players' workload in a "big" way.

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"Even we have a policy in place at the moment. We have rested players in between matches, and also some top players for a series and things like that. It is under place, even for us.

That is going to be the future because of the volume of cricket that is being played, and also with all the current rules which are going to exist for some time, I think it is extremely important that the players are fresh mentally, physically. So workload management is going to be big in the future,” Arun said.

"If you look at them (all six), you could put any three or four out of them on the park. They are good enough to do the job for us. So that is a very, very healthy trend for Indian cricket. And so the five-Test matches that we're going to play after the World Test Championship, there's a definite cause of necessity for us to rotate all the bowlers so that they stay fresh,” Arun signed off.

(PTI inputs)