Ishant Sharma
Prasidh Krishna's inclusion in the main squad is just a "precautionary measure" and India's bowling coach Bharath Arun on Wednesday said that they are only looking at workload management of fast bowlers purely from the perspective of the ongoing series.
Mohammed Shami has bowled nearly 100 overs in the series while Mohammed Siraj and Jasprit Bumrah have crossed the three-figure mark.
Asked how the team management will monitor their workload keeping IPL and World T20 in mind, Arun said: "To be honest, we are looking at the availability of fast bowlers for us in this series and I don't think we should look too far ahead.
"We have to look at how many fast bowlers with fresh legs we can play at any given point of time. It is being looked at purely from the point of view of this series and not any further," the bowling coach clarified.
The coach also said that there were some concerns about Ishant Sharma's form in the Leeds Test but they have been put to rest.
"Ishant's form in the last game as you said was a bit of concern and but we have things sorted out. Prasidh is just a precautionary inclusion.
"We needed to induce him into the Test team now, just in case. He is being included in the team considering all the workload management issues and there's nothing more to it than that."
On a different note Arun said that he would have ideally liked to see how English bowlers performed if they were all out for 78 on the first day of a Test match.
"If you look at the Lord's Test, you would say Indian bowling was better than English bowling and that's the time when Indian bowlers could swing the bowl and they did right at that time.
"In the last Test, yes, I would agree with you, English bowling looked a lot better. I would also like to see how they would be bowling if they are defending a score of 78. Yes, there is always room for improvement. It will be different cup of tea in the next game," Arun assured.
