Jasprit Bumrah reveals MS Dhoni's 'short & simple' advice ahead of his debut in 2016

India's pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah has revealed former skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni's advice to him just before his debut against Australia in 2016. Speaking to a cricket news website, Bumrah accounted of the moments before the match where he was uncertain if he would even play the match and that is when head coach Ravi Shastri came to him to tell him that he would be in the playing eleven just before the toss. Since making his debut, Bumrah has picked 104 ODI wickets, 62 Test wickets and 59 wickets in the shortest format of the game. 

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'Just be yourself and enjoy'

Remembering MSD's wise words, the speedster said, "I was scared at that time. I was nervous a bit, so I thought, like how it is normal in a match, the senior players will help me through it, but nobody came up to me, nobody said anything. I thought something will come up, some instruction. Nothing. No one came up to me or said anything. The warm-up finished, the toss was done, everything was ready. Nobody is coming up and saying anything to me. I thought, okay fine, again I'll use that advice and just treat it as a normal game. Just before going in, MS came up to me and said, 'Just be yourself and enjoy.' and I said to myself that it is a bit less than I expected, but it was good." 

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Speaking about how he felt if he would not even play on his debut, Bumrah said, "Sydney is very close to my heart and Test cricket, I always wanted to play. Sydney debut was my first international game. After a lot of hard work, finally, you get the call. The day I reached, we had a practice session which did not happen because it had rained. So I thought now I wouldn't play because the team does not know what I do. They don't know how I play, how I bowl. So, on the next day, early morning of the match day when I went to the team meeting, then Ravi Shastri, who was the team director at that time. So he told me, 'are you fresh, are you ready?' I said yeah, I am fresh but for what? So he said you have to play."

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