'The pace was up, the execution was good.'
India pacer Jasprit Bumrah is in 'good nick' following a three-month-long injury lay-off and Mumbai Indians want to ease him into competition mode in IPL 2025, said head coach Mahela Jayawardene.
Bumrah made his return to top flight cricket on Monday in MI's IPL clash against Royal Challengers Bengaluru after another back-related trouble sidelining him in early January.
While he was welcomed back with a six over midwicket by India teammate Virat Kohli in the first over, Bumrah couldn't force matters on his own apart from a customary tidy spell as RCB notched up a 12-run win to hand MI their fourth loss in five matches.
"I just spoke to him after the game and he looks in good nick. He's disappointed as well, he wanted a win when he came back but other than that he looks fine. The pace was up, the execution was good," Jayawardene said after the match.
Jayawardene defended MI's call to introduce Bumrah late into the attack, saying the team management wanted to ease him into the competition.
"(To have Bumrah back) it just gives us more options," Jayawardene said.
"We got two swing bowlers, we need to give them that opportunity first up. Boom (Bumrah) is coming back from a three-month layoff as well, so we just wanted to ease him into the competition," the MI head coach said on Monday.
"But he bowled well and controlled things really well, so the more he starts playing game time, he'll get into it. The last time he was playing a Test match so all of a sudden he's playing a T20 so we need to understand that, but the skills were brilliant," he added.
Jayawardene sounded assured of Bumrah's progress as well as current status in terms of fitness and form.
"Yesterday (Sunday) was his first day where he bowled to batsmen. That (Bumrah's bowling) is something that we lacked in the last few games, so we have (now) that as well. But we just need to put all these pieces together and execute a good game to give us confidence so that we can move on," he said.
Jayawardene said while Bumrah had bowling sessions at BCCI's Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru, he of course lacked game-time and building that was their focus during training on Sunday.
"NCA has a programme that they have to go through do all the fitness tests and and make sure that he's in good name that applies to I think all Indian central contracted players," Jayawardene said.
"Once he went through that, he had five-six good sessions as well, everything was cleared. The only thing he was lacking was game-time, he hadn't played actively so that was something that he came and worked with us yesterday at the nets execution-wise."
"The experience, the skill that you saw today was pretty good. He bowled to some good players and probably had two or three bad balls in that spell so I'm pretty happy with that," the head coach added.
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