2017 ICC Champions Trophy: Bhuvneshwar Kumar Surprised With Lack of Swing
Nov 2, 2023 at 3:41 PM
England is a swing and seam bowler’s paradise. The visiting speedsters look forward to bowling in such conditions, especially the ones flying in from the sub-continent. However, the hopefuls who arrived here seeking seam and swing have been left dejected. Bhuvneshwar Kumar is among one of them.
The Indian bowler, who relies mostly on movement off the pitch is surprised to see no help from the pitches in England this time. Sensing these unusual changes, the right-armer has altered his strategy after failing to understand the cause of the problem.
“It’s very difficult to point out why the ball is not swinging in England. The wickets are not generally this hard in England during this time of the year. During the Champions Trophy in 2013 and the next year during Test series, wickets were soft.”
“Not very soft that batsmen would encounter problems but soft enough for some deviation,” Bhuvneshwar told media persons at the mixed zone after India reached the semi-finals.
Bhuvneshwar has bowled 22.3 overs and taken four wickets at the cost of 100 runs with a very decent economy rate of 4.44 from the three games he has played so far in the tournament. He is still trying to find out the elements responsible for the cut in the swing.
“I don’t know whether that’s the reason or something to do with the quality of the balls, but as everyone is watching that it’s difficult for the bowlers to get swing.”
A bowler has never had the liberty to whine about unfavourable conditions in modern day cricket especially where the game is largely tilted in support of the batsman. The only option is to improvise and Bhuvneshwar has done exactly the same. The 27-year-old has tried different lengths and lines to keep himself in the contest with the batsmen.
“When the ball doesn’t swing then you have to alter the length. You have to bowl a bit back of the length. Normally, we bowl fuller lengths to get wickets but here we are holding
the length back.”
Bhuvneshwar used his improvisations to great effect against South Africa at the KIA Oval, London where he ended up as the most successful bowler with figures of 2/23.
“In these circumstances, the idea is not to bowl at their strengths. Look, they will still find ways to score but idea was to keep it at bare minimum. I feel the pressure that we created in the first 15 overs helped us get wickets later on, not to forget the three brilliant run-outs,” he added.
According to Bhuvneshwar, being economical during the second Powerplay was a crucail fator behind the proteas downfall apart from the run outs that kept increasing the pressure.
“When (Quinton) De Kock and (Hashim) Amla were batting, we knew that their strategy was to not lose too many wickets till the 30th over, before going for the kill. But our plan was to ensure that we build pressure with dot balls.
“The 40 runs that we saved during the second Powerplay helped. If you are only 130 at the end of 30th over, you are mentally under pressure.”