MUMBAI: A fit and in-form Bhuvneshwar kumar would have been Team India’s greatest asset on the tour of England. In ideal circumstances, nobody among the current lot of Indian pacers is capable of getting handed a ticket to the United Kingdom ahead of Bhuvneshwar.
In a country where how you bowl swing and seam, and how you counter it, determines a large part of the team’s fortunes, the Meerut-born seamer would’ve been the perfect arsenal to carry along. Yet he is not in the squad. Right now, Bhuvneshwar is not injured, as has been the case often in his career, especially over the last four years. Unlike last year, when he got ruled out of the Australia series because of a thigh injury he suffered during an IPL game, he has been fit for most part of this year.
The Syed Mushtaq Ali and the Vijay Hazare tournaments saw the 31-year-old find a place for himself in the One-dayers and T20s against England, where he impressed, and it appeared as if he was on the move again. Then where is Bhuvneshwar right now? Those tracking the bowler’s career and cricket say he is “focusing on the next T20 opportunities coming up”.
“Bhuvneshwar just doesn’t want to play Test cricket anymore. That drive has gone missing,” they add. Those who have seen him from close insist he brought in a huge change in his work-drills a couple of seasons ago, doing away with heavy weight training, falling to the lure of the white-ball comfort and avoiding those hours of long spells that are so integral to red-ball cricket.
“To be honest, the selectors don’t even see Bhuvi hungry for 10 overs, forget Test cricket. It’s Team India’s loss no doubt, because if one bowler should have made it to England, it should have been him,” say those tracking developments.
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