Bumrah Ruled Out of the Sri Lanka Tests, and Jammu and Kashmir Wait on a First
India will go to Galle without their best fast bowler. Jasprit Bumrah has not recovered from the knee trouble he picked up in England, and the man called up in his place would become the first Test cricketer Jammu and Kashmir has produced.
When India named their squad for the two Test tour of Sri Lanka on 28 July, two players were listed subject to a fitness clearance. One of those questions has now been answered, and not in India's favour.
Bumrah does not travel
Jasprit Bumrah has been ruled out of the series with persistent discomfort in his left knee, the injury he carried out of the one day series against England. For a tour that asks fast bowlers to hold an end while the spinners work, losing the best of them is a straightforward loss of quality rather than a squad reshuffle.
The replacement is a story in himself
Auqib Nabi, the Jammu and Kashmir seamer, comes into the squad for a maiden India Test call-up, and he arrives with a domestic record that made the selection difficult to argue with.
He has taken 104 first class wickets across the last two Ranji Trophy seasons. Sixty of those came in 2025-26 alone, the season Jammu and Kashmir won the Ranji Trophy for the first time in their history, and he was central to it. He was also part of the India A side that toured Sri Lanka recently, where he took six wickets in two first class matches, which means he has at least bowled on these surfaces this year.
If he plays, he becomes the first cricketer from Jammu and Kashmir to appear in a Test match for India. That is the kind of line that gets written about a player once.
What the tour looks like now
India play a practice match in Colombo from 7 August. The first Test starts at Galle on 15 August and the second at the Sinhalese Sports Club in Colombo on 23 August.
Shubman Gill captains, with KL Rahul as his deputy. Washington Sundar was already unavailable for the first Test, and Sai Sudharsan was the other name listed subject to fitness when the squad was announced.
Why it matters beyond one absence
Sri Lanka in August is a spin tour, and India picked it that way, with Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Manav Suthar and the uncapped Saransh Jain all in the party. The seamers are there to take the new ball and to bowl the hard, thankless spells in between.
That job now falls to Mohammed Siraj and Prasidh Krishna, with Gurnoor Brar and Nabi behind them. It is a younger and less proven group than the one India expected to take, and Galle has a habit of asking exactly one question of a bowling attack: can you take twenty wickets before the pitch stops helping anyone.