Why Jasprit Bumrah Struggled IPL 2026? Mahela Jayawardene reveals the shocking reason

Jasprit Bumrah (BCCI/IPL Photo) NEW DELHI: Mumbai Indians head coach Mahela Jayawardene on Saturday revealed that Jasprit Bumrah has carried over a bit of this year’s T20 World Cup, which India won, into IPL 2026 and that was one of the reasons for the pacer’s crushing season in the league. Jayawardene said that Bumrah was not given enough time to recover after the global tournament, which affected his performances.Bumrah managed just four wickets in 13 matches for Mumbai Indians and his poor form was one of the main reasons behind the franchise’s disappointing IPL 2026 campaign.The five-time champions have already crashed out of the tournament having won just four and lost nine of their 13 matches.Jayawardene said the 32-year-old has been struggling with injury during the early stages of IPL 2026.“(It’s due to) a combination of things. When he came back from the (T20) World Cup, he had a slight ailment that he played with through the World Cup, so we gave him enough rest to come back,” Jayawardene told reporters on the eve of MI’s last league game against Rajasthan Royals.In fact, Mumbai Indians allowed their India internationals – Bumrah, captain Hardik Pandya, Suryakumar Yadav and Tilak Varma – to join the pre-season camp only five days before the start of IPL 2026 on March 28.According to Jayawardene, Bumrah’s reduced pace during the early stages of the IPL was due to the pacemaker undergoing “gradual build-up”.“(In) the first 4-5 games, it was a gradual build-up for him to get over the soreness he had. You could see the pace dropped because of that and now he’s back to his pace. The last 4-5 games have been good.”“But obviously when you go through something like that, you lose a little bit of sharpness and all that because you’re fighting something else. But I think from a health point of view it’s 100% (but it’s) unfortunate that the season is over for us (now),” Jayawardene said.It has been a challenging season for Bumrah, who also featured in four of India’s five T20Is against the New Zealand national cricket team ahead of the T20 World Cup.Bumrah finished the World Cup as the joint-highest wicket-taker alongside Varun Chakravarthy with 14 wickets, including a match-winning 4/15 in the final against New Zealand, playing eight of India’s nine matches in the tournament.The former Sri Lankan captain said opposition teams have also been cautious about Bumrah despite his struggles.“Teams didn’t take too many chances against him in certain situations. They played him because we weren’t able to create the pressure around him also in the sense that the other pitchers weren’t able to create the kind of pressure we needed,” he said.Jayawardene said MI tried to carefully manage Bumrah’s workload during the season.“(We had) good talks and Bumrah is very experienced now. It was a collective talk with his training staff, like where do we push him and how – there was also workload management – how much he could throw himself into the nets in preparation,” Jayawardene said.“In the beginning, we tried to throw him tactically in situations as well, so he wouldn’t be under pressure. But as a leadoff pitcher, he was under pressure all the time, like he was bowling to death.”“But we’ve used him in different ways this season, so it gives him a little more freedom. But he understands that; he’ll come back and smile and say, ‘coach, that didn’t work, let’s try something else’.”Jayawardene believes that Bumrah is now back in full swing and there are no long-term concerns.“But I wouldn’t worry about Booms, I think he’s in good spirits and he’ll come back strong. We’ll all learn from these seasons and get through it all. But one thing’s for sure, there’s no doubting the effort he’s put in over these six or eight weeks to get back to where he should be,” he said.“The last couple of games he’s been top-notch. He’s been back again, bouncing that 140km/h, holding the yorkers. He’s had a few run-up problems, purely because it’s been with the goof he’s had.”Jayawardene also revealed that Bumrah has been working on his problems without the ball during the season.“He’s thrown quite a few no-balls this season, if you remember — that has to do with the build, so he’s gone back to it and worked on it. Whenever we’ve had long breaks, he’s worked on it.”“I can’t take anything away from his work ethic and what he puts out on the field. It just didn’t happen on the field. But we had good conversations and we know what we have to do. We tried and it didn’t work. But we just have to move on from that,” he said.