Ashish Nehra has come out in support of Jasprit Bumrah and wants the supporting pacers to step up.

Jasprit Bumrah is not at his best since returning from an ankle injury. For the first time in his career, he went wicketless in a three-match ODI series. Former Indian seamer Ashish Nehra has backed him as he knows that it isn’t easy to perform in every series especially after returning from an injury. He even mentioned how the Indian skipper also had a quiet series.

Nehra told TOI, “You can’t expect Bumrah to deliver in every series. One has to remember he is returning from injury. It’s difficult for anybody to keep performing at the top of his game all the time. Even Virat Kohli has had a quiet series.”

He also claimed that the Indian team management is not upto the mark while picking playing elevens. It has increased the dependency on bowlers like Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammad Shami, who will not be able to deliver all the time.

Pacers apart from these two don’t know their roles and that is the reason they are inconsistent. He said, “The Indian team management could be much better while picking the playing XI. The other pacers, besides Bumrah and (Mohammad) Shami, need to know their roles. They have got used to having Bumrah and Shami firing for the last two years. There’s too much pressure on Bumrah. There has been very little consistency in the team selection so far.”

The 40-year-old also talked about the bowling style of Navdeep Saini and suggested that he should bowl fuller lengths to get more wickets behind the stumps. He is currently bowling a lot of good length deliveries which are more suited for being miserly rather than picking up more wickets.

“In the current scenario, Saini is better prepared for Test cricket than Umesh Yadav, since he has the momentum with the team. But he largely depends on the back-of-a-length deliveries. If he can get his length a bit fuller at his pace, he would open up more chances of getting wickets behind the stumps,” he added.

(With inputs from TOI)