I worked towards improving my death bowling for two-three years: Bhuvneshwar Kumar

Bhuvneshwar Kumar, the bowling spearhead of the Sunrisers Hyderabad bowling unit has been one of the most reliable death over bowler in this IPL. His partnership along with the mystifying Mustafizur Rahman has made very team choke in the final overs of the innings.

Speaking to The Hindu, the 26-year old talked about how he emphasized on becoming a death over bowler from being just a new ball bowler.

Kumar says, “It wasn’t just the last IPL but I have been working on this aspect for the last two-three years. That was another side that I wasn’t so good at when I made my debut in international cricket, so I have been working towards improving my death bowling for two-three years now.“

The 26-year-old seamer says that the IPL provided a platform for him to perfect his art.

“Glad that it came off well in the last IPL. The IPL presents you with at least 14 opportunities to improve on a particular aspect of your game, and 14 is a huge number to make something work,“ Bhuvneshwar affirmed.

A lot of that could be attributed to his rigorous preparation off the field which helped him add an extra yard of pace. Kumar said, “When I came into the international circuit, pace wasn’t my strength. But when you spend some time at a particular level, you realize where you need to improve in order to succeed at that level and go even higher.”

“That is where I decided to work on my pace. It is one department which is usually hard to improve on at this level but I would sincerely like to thank the regime set for me by Indian team’s new trainer, Basu Shankar. He set a program for me, power training, which helped me achieve my goal without losing the key skill,” he added.

But, he assured that compromising on swing was not part of the preparation. Kumar stated, “ I realized if I wanted to play Test cricket in India, I had to gain pace but not at the cost of swing. I was always clear I wanted to be known as a swing bowler but someone who could bowl decent pace. I worked with the same objective.”