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Sabyasachi Bagchi, Kolkata: All of us are quite familiar with bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar, however few of us are aware of the batsman that he is. Yesterday he played a crucial innings of 53* runs with former skipper MS Dhoni building a 100 run partnership to drive India to a brilliant win thereby taking a 2-0 lead over hosts Sri Lanka in the five match ODI series.
This was Kumar’s first half century however this is not the first time he has added score in the board. During 2014 tour of England, in the first test at Trentbridge, Bhuvi scored 58 and 63*. In the second test at Lord’s he scored 36 and 52 runs and all as a tail-ender. Same happened yesterday at Pallekelle when he denied Sri Lanka a golden opportunity to level the series.
Kumar joined the cricket academy of Sanjay Rastogi at an early age of 13 at Victoria Park Academy at Bhamashah Cricket Academy in Meerut. However from the age of 10 he used to play Amateur league tournaments which were played by tennis balls.
“There used to be matches of 8 overs and huge scores of 150+ were often made and Bhuvneshwar was really good with the bat. When he joined my academy, he had brilliant foot work enquired about his batting. He was a different person as he used to give equal time to both batting and bowling altogether. During the early years when we had barren grounds he used to practice with wet balls which hugely improved his game” said Sanjoy Rastogi while talking to www.xtratime.in correspondent Sabyasachi Bagchi.
According to his coach he often used to travel to Delhi from Meerut to play these tournaments and in different clubs.
“In the 2005-06 seasons, when Uttar Pradesh defeated Bengal to win the finals of the Ranji Trophy, Bhuvneshwar and other players were highly inspired by the players of those times like Md. Kaif, Suresh Raina, Praveen Kumar, RP Singh and Piyush Chawla. Ever since his childhood he used to dream of becoming an all-rounder” Rastogi added.
Bhuvneshwar’s father Kiran Pal Singh, retired Sub-Inspector of the UP police said, “I always wanted my son to play cricket. We even had options of playing him from Delhi as the distance from Meerut to Delhi is very less. However many youngsters play well from Delhi and somehow I thought that my child would get lost from there. So I wanted my son to play from UP.”
A longtime friend and teammate, former captain who recently moved to Gujarat Piyush Chawla said, “He always used to play at No.8 and I can recount many incidents like almost 10-12 times when we both played crucial innings to save our side. He always had the mentality to play long innings and also beams with confidence.”
“He was highly motivated by one incident when in 2008-09 Ranji Trophy finals he bowled Sachin Tendulkar for a duck in the very first ball. Sachin advised him that he would play well and would represent his country. This incident changed his life” concluded Chawla.