Bend it like Bhuvi

Rohit Mahajan

WHEN Sachin Tendulkar was out for a 0 for the first time in domestic  first-class cricket — after 20 years of playing! — it was a skinny teenager with the ball who had done the trick. It was the Ranji Trophy final, Uttar Pradesh vs Mumbai. Bhuvneshwar bowled 13 full deliveries at Tendulkar, swinging out. The 14th ball, also full, fooled Tendulkar — it came in and the great batsman edged it to his pad, and was caught for an unprecedented domestic 0.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar Singh, like two other swinging Singhs, Rudra Pratap  and Praveen Kumar, has roots in Uttar Pradesh. It’s intriguing that the three of India’s best swing bowlers of recent times — plus Mohammed Shami, born in Amroha in Uttar Pradesh but coached and nurtured in Bengal — should come from Uttar Pradesh. The state doesn’t have much pedigree in swing bowling. Yet, there we have the three Singhs and a Shami, all possessing the ability to bend the ball at will. Praveen and Bhuvneshwar do have common coaches who’ve mentored them at times, though the two are as different as can be. Praveen is an abrasive character who, famously, was termed mentally unfit to play the game by an umpire, after he had head-butted a batsman in a domestic match.

Calm head

No such allegation can ever be made against Bhuvneshwar — he’s mild-mannered, quiet, soft-spoken and likely to blush when praised excessively.

He’s had some praise, right from his first over in international cricket — on his India debut, against Pakistan in a T20 match, he got Nasir Jamshed in his first over. In his ODI debut, he bowled Mohammad Hafeez with the first ball. On his Test debut against Australia, on a wicket tailormade for spinners, he didn’t do much with the ball, but added 140 runs with captain MS Dhoni for the ninth wicket, and India won the game easily.

Swing Star

Bhuvneshwar doesn’t have express pace — he operates in the 135kmph region, which isn’t enough to hurry batsmen; but the swing that he manages to produce in helpful conditions can trouble the best of batsmen.

And he’s been working hard — he’s added a few kmphs to his pace over the last few years, and has added new skills, yorkers. This he did by picking up a method used by Lasith Malinga — placing boots on the wicket while practising.  “This is something that I’ve been doing for some time,” Bhuvneshwar said early this year. "I didn’t practise that for almost a month now because in Tests, we hardly needed that. And I didn’t play a match.”

Bhuvneshwar couldn’t play much last year due to a series of injuries — in the years 2018-19, he missed all Tests abroad after picking up the Man of the Match award in Johannesburg in January 2018. Having played only 25 limited-overs matches in 2018, he was struggling for rhythm. It hasn’t been easy, but there have been moments — 5/25 against South Africa in a T20I in February 2018, and 4/45 against Australia at Adelaide in January this year. In the Adelaide game, with not much swing obtainable, Bhuvneshwar bowled intelligently, trying to fool batsmen with change in pace. He would need to do that in England and Wales too, it seems, because the wickets there are flat and swing bowling is under pressure even in the UK now.

Second World Cup

“The skills needed are totally different,” Bhuvneshwar recently said about getting to bowl with the new and old ball in ODIs. “You are trying to swing the new ball and take wickets. With the old ball, you are looking to bowl yorkers or slower balls. But they are both difficult. When you are bowling with a new ball, there are only two fielders outside the circle. With the old ball, batsmen don’t care how many guys are outside the circle. Skills are also different.”

Bhuvneshwar was part of the Indian team at the 2015 World Cup, but got to play only one game, against UAE in which he took 1/19. Four years on, he believes he’s a much better bowler now, having added new skills, tricks — such as the knuckle ball — and a bit of pace to his bowling. A bit of rain and wind in the UK would help, too.

India Squad

Bhuvneshwar Kumar
Sultan of Swing

Factfile

Age: 29 years 105 days
Born in: Meerut, UP
Major teams: India, Uttar Pradesh, Pune Warriors, RCB, SRH

Trivia

• Son of a policeman, Bhuvneshwar wanted to become an Armyman, but got hooked to cricket at an early age
• It was his older sister, Rekha, who supported his dreams to play cricket, and took him to a coaching camp when he was 13
• Before the Under-17 trials for the UP team, he did not have proper bowling boots with spikes, and his sister rushed to Delhi to buy them for him. He got selected in the trials
• Bhuvneshwar is a gaming enthusiast, and loves his PlayStation
• His first wicket in international cricket in all the three formats came when he bowled the batsman