New Delhi: Mumbai Indians The head coach Mahila Jayawardene It was revealed on Saturday that Jaspreet Bumrah A shock from this year’s T20 World Cup, which India won in IPL 2026, was one of the reasons for the pacer’s dominant season in the league. Jayawardene said that Bumrah did not get enough recovery time after the world tournament which affected his performance.Bumrah has taken just four wickets in 13 matches for Mumbai Indians, and his poor form has been a major reason behind the franchise’s disappointing IPL 2026 campaign.The five-time champions have already crashed out of the tournament after winning just four of their 13 matches and losing nine.Jayawardene said the 32-year-old had been battling injury during the initial phase of IPL 2026.“(It’s) a combination of things,” Jayawardene told reporters on the sidelines of MI’s final league match against Rajasthan Royals.In fact, Mumbai Indians allowed their Indian international – Bumrah, the captain. Hardik PandyaSuryakumar Yadav and Tilak Verma – will join the pre-season camp just five days before the start of IPL 2026 on March 28.According to Jayawardene, Bumrah’s decline in pace during the early stages of the IPL was because the pacer was undergoing a “gradual build-up”.“(In the first 4-5 games), it was a gradual build for him to get over the niggle he had. You could see the velocity dropped because of that, and now he’s back to his velocity. The last 4-5 games have been good.“But obviously, when you’re going through something like that, you lose a little bit of the finesse of the execution and all because you’re fighting something else. But I think health-wise, it’s 100 per cent (but) unfortunate that the season is over (now) for us,” Jayawardene said.It has been a tough season for Bumrah, who also featured in four of the five T20Is against the New Zealand national cricket team before the T20 World Cup.Bumrah ended the World Cup as the joint-highest wicket-taker with Varun Chakraborty with 14 wickets, including a match-winning 4/15 in the final against New Zealand, while playing eight of India’s nine matches in the tournament.The former Sri Lankan captain said that opposition teams had also approached cautiously despite Bumrah’s struggles.“Teams haven’t taken too many risks against him in certain situations. They’ve played him because we haven’t been able to build pressure around him as well, in the sense that the other bowlers haven’t been able to build the pressure that we need,” he said.Jayawardene said MI tried to manage Bumrah’s workload carefully during the season.“(We’ve had) good discussions, and Bumrah is very experienced now. It was a collective discussion with his coaching staff, like where we push him and how – as well as workload management – how much he could bowl in the nets in preparation,” Jayawardene said.“Initially, we tried to bowl him tactically in situations so that he was not under pressure. But being the lead bowler he was always under pressure, like bowling at the death.“But we used him in different ways this season to give him a little more freedom. But he understands that; he comes back and he smiles and says, ‘Coach, it didn’t work, let’s try something different’.”Jayawardene believes that Bumrah is back to full rhythm now and there are no long-term concerns.“But I wouldn’t worry about Bums, I think he’s in good spirits and he’ll come back strong. We all learn from these types of seasons and handle them all. But one thing’s for sure, there’s no doubt in the effort he’s put in over those six or eight weeks to get back to where he should be,” he said.“In the last few games, he was on top. He came back again, bowling at 140 kmph, he was hitting yorkers. He had some problems with his run-up, purely because he had a niggle.”Jayawardene also revealed that Bumrah was working on his no-ball issues during the season.“He was hitting a lot of no-balls this season, if you remember — that has to do with the build-up, so that’s something he’s gone back and worked on. Every time we had long breaks, he was working on it.”“I can’t take anything away from his work ethic and what he does off the field. It’s just that it hasn’t happened on the field. But we’ve had a good conversation and we know what we need to do. We tried, but it didn’t work. But we just need to move on,” he said.
