While the 15-year-old Vaibhav Suryavanshi’s fearless hitting has made him this season’s highest run-getter, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, at 36, has exploited that same trait in several new-age batsmen to emerge as one of the league’s top wicket-takers. Though he hasn’t yet got Suryavanshi’s wicket, Bhuvneshwar’s 26 scalps include the who’s who of Gen Next daredevils—Priyansh Arya, Prabhsimran Singh, Sahil Parakh, Sameer Rizvi, Ayush Mhatre, and a few more.
The sly old fox has reminded the young turks that their stand-and-deliver, relentless attacking approach, though very popular with fans, isn’t bulletproof. He isn’t allowing the relentlessly attacking kids to run away with his sport. Not that he is getting any credit for keeping bowlers relevant in T20 cricket. But then, that has been Bhuvneshwar’s story all along.
As a rookie bowler, he notched Sachin Tendulkar’s first duck in domestic cricket. He had a dream ODI debut against Pakistan, running through their top-order. He is on the Lord’s honours board. He has two Purple Caps and two IPL titles.
Still, Bhuvi isn’t even the most talked-about cricketer from his hometown Meerut. That honour goes to Praveen Kumar. In RCB, there are Virat Kohli and now Rajat Patidar, players with more star power than him. Not that he minds or works towards building an aura around him. A man of few words, he isn’t just understated but does his best to underplay himself.
Once, an interviewer asked him the secret of his swing bowling and suggested a few options: Is it because of the several ball-manufacturing units in Meerut? Was it because Bittu, his childhood name, was passionate about kite flying, a daily activity that helped him develop dexterous wrists? As if to cut the conversation short or probably not keen to intellectualise his art, he agreed to both. If easy access to a gleaming red cherry and kite flying made one the Sultan of Swing, India would be brimming with bowlers of Bhuvneshwar’s skill. Bhuvi, the Sultan of Swing, didn’t mind the image of a kite-flying Bittu.
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Though later in the chat, he did mention the hours he put in as a 10-year-old with a slight build to be a fast bowler. He didn’t have any energy left to even eat food. His mother gave his elder sister the daily duty of feeding him as he sprawled on the bed, shut his eyes, and called it a day. He also had drools dripping from the corner of his mouth when he slept — a clear sign of a thoroughly exhausted person. These were nuggets mentioned in passing with no effort to exaggerate his ordeal from his early days. In his part of the world, the industrial town of Meerut, they call Bhuvneshwar a karmath cricketer—a player with a great work-ethic and firm believer of karma and not the hype-industry.
Bhuvneshwar comes across as a laid-back cricketer but that’s misleading, like his bowling. Watch his eyes when he runs in to bowl — fully focused on the target, tiny balls of fire burn at the very center of his pupils when he towers over the stumps, arches his back, and unleashes the ball exactly where he wants. Every time he has the ball in his hand, he seems to be in a zone, his brain ticking constantly to spot a weakness in the batsman in front. His goal is to dismiss the batsman, nothing else. No ugly send-off or a sledge to vent out the anger or even an over-the-top celebration to tell the batsman that he was better on the day.
When he got Tendulkar, he hung his head, as if to offer an apology to Paaji. At Lord’s, when he knocked back Ben Stokes’s stump to take his fifth, all he could manage was a mild fist-pump. In the IPL too, when he gets one of the new stars, a Johnny-come-lately hard-hitter, his celebration doesn’t have the angst of a veteran who grudges the success and riches of the newbies. Once he has beaten their defense, he is on his own, flying on the turf, celebrating his victory and not the batsman’s defeat. His face betrays the satisfaction of a thinking bowler who has cracked the code to pin down the modern T20 smasher.
In an RCB video, when asked to compare Suryavanshi & Co. to past batsmen, he shares a secret that gives hope that all is not lost for the bowlers. “They (new-age T20 batsmen) are fearless. They don’t think about what the conditions are and what the situation is. They take on the bowlers. That is also the reason batsmen of the past are more mature and read the situation and conditions better than these guys,” he says.
Bhuvneshwar celebrates after cleaning up Shubman Gill in the Qualifier 1 match. (CREIMAS)
While lesser bowlers get intimidated by the massive back lift and the bats moving like a golf swing, Bhuvneshwar sees an opening. A classical swing bowler, with immaculate control over the line and length, the ever-evolving bowler bowls lengths that force batsmen to move their feet—something today’s T20 batsmen aren’t used to.
By an indiscernible adjustment of the thumb on the ball, he has it on a string. He got Arya out with a ball pitched at a length that was beyond his reach; the extra bounce that he gets from bending the back at the last minute resulted in a mis-hit. Prabhsimran was foxed by a ball pitched on a Test match length, swung wide on the off-side and moved further away after pitching. By habit he swung and edged behind. Rizvi couldn’t read the length and got bowled.
Bhuvi the conjurer has been playing the young batsmen this season. As he said, they weren’t reading the conditions, situation, or the bowler who had Tendulkar for a duck and is a Lord’s hero.
Here’s a humble request to those punch-drunk on the success of this IPL’s young six-hitting machine—spare a thought for an equally successful crafty old-timer. If your fingers are hurting from applauding Suryavanshi all season, deliver a slow-clap ovation to Bhuvneshwar.
