Bhuvneshwar Kumar: The hero SRH have needed but hardly understood

What Bhuvneshwar Kumar achieved for the SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) against the Rajasthan Royals (RR) on a balmy Thursday evening at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium in Uppal, Hyderabad defies classification.

Perhaps that is why it shall go down as one of the finest last overs ever bowled in the history of the Indian Premier League (IPL). The hero of the scene, famously 'detached' from the result, yet involved enough to leave his sweet-smelling fragrance behind.

"I told everyone that the process is very important," Bhuveshwar famously said after the game. "I was literally thoughtless, I was not thinking about the result. I was just trying to do what I can do."

And what exactly did he do? For those unfortunate enough to not have made the trip east to Uppal from the city center to catch glimpses of the Eagles' latest antics, it has to be mentioned that they beat table-toppers RR by a mere one run.

Rajasthan, who have perennially been the David to SRH's Goliath, especially in Uppal, fell excruciatingly short of winning their ninth game this season and fell to just their second loss in this brilliantined campaign. The first had come when a former Eagle, Rashid Khan, had square-cut his way to take the Gujarat Titans home in Jaipur.

The death was when Bhuvneshwar Kumar, about whom this piece may be supposed to sing paeans, came into his own and delivered one of the biggest performances of his T20 career.

Needing 13 off the last over, the Meerut-born seamer nailed yorkers that he had worked hard at in front of nobody and managed to take SRH to the last ball, in which their opponents needed two runs.

Although the West Indies captain Rovman Powell and India legend Ravichandran Ashwin had done enough to make sure their team needed just two off the last over, they had not calculated for a Bhuvi intervention.

The latter bowled a low full toss of all deliveries and managed to catch Powell unaware as he whipped at it but missed the trajectory altogether. It seemed plumb in front, as the replays confirmed even as Powell reviewed it.

"I knew if I could bowl just two good balls, and if it went to the last ball, anything could happen. It was a full toss, I know, but he missed it," said Bhuvneshwar after the game.

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Bhuvneshwar Kumar had a fabulous start to his international career

To understand Bhuvneshwar's 'thoughtless' state of mind, one must understand what he has gone through over what must seem to many to be the twilight of his fabled career. And yet, it seems still so half-baked given what might have been.

The latter statement comes about only because of the stellar manner in which he made his first foray into the international arena, back when India and Pakistan were still amiable enough to play bilateral cricket against each other.

Mohammad Hafeez got the first taste of the sugary syrup this lad from Meerut produced when he was sent back to the pavilion off the first ball of the innings with Pakistan chasing a seemingly harmless 228 to beat India in Chennai.

Hafeez left a rather wide delivery from outside off but had to roll his eyes in distrust as the ball came back in sharply to take the top of his off stump.

This was, however, after Pakistan had already got a sense of his godlike abilities to swing the ball in his debut T20I game in Bengaluru when Umar Akmal was bowled by one that swung back in a mile from wide of the crease.

If ever a newbie needed an introduction to international cricket, could they have dreamt of it any better? Alas, not all mornings show the day.

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power

All that beauty, all that wealth ever gave

Awaits alike the inevitable hour

The paths of glory lead but to the grave"

When Thomas Gray wrote these lines in Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, to whom was he referring?

For all of Bhuvneshwar Kumar's abilities to swing the ball both away and into the right-hander - and apparent pedigree for hailing from a town where a certain Praveen Kumar too did - his ambitions were cut short by a desperate India seeking raw pace over guile.

Like all classical men, Bhuvneshwar resisted the urge to change for as long as he could before yielding to the temptation to become quicker than he was, and that - at least temporarily - spelt his doom.

And yet, like those classical men whom he dearly represented and hoped to emulate, the right-arm pacer returned with the deadliest arrow in his quiver - the inswinging yorker - after he had spent enough time away from the national team soul-searching.

It cannot be refuted that there was no pressure from the franchise he has been a part of since 2014 to mend his ways and mend he did, albeit with mixed results in the early days of his marriage of swing to pace.

When he did return, he formed one of the deadliest combinations with Jasprit Bumrah in blue, merging his slower ones seamlessly into his quirky, and rather crafty tactics of getting the ball to seam back in.

Quite naturally, SRH benefitted too, and the stats speak for themselves: he is the franchise's all-time leading wicket-taker; it could only take the coldest of hearts to let him go ahead of the 2022 mega auction although the Marans saved face by bringing him back.

The hard work that Bhuvneshwar had put in behind the scenes to add pace to his arsenal was also tempered with bouts of mental conditioning that allowed him to remain unattached to everything that went beyond his purview.

And very nicely did he understand that he could only control what was in his hands. It was rather unfortunate that it had to be the hard-hitting Powell at the receiving end of his sweet-smelling venom on Thursday.

What will go down as perhaps the saddest epoch of his career is that despite being India's finest swing bowler - since his 'ustaad' Praveen Kumar at least - he last played a Test in 2018 and is highly unlikely to add to his 21 caps.

Although he has found his niche in white-ball cricket - in T20s specifically - not playing red-ball cricket for India will hurt Bhuvi, as will his absence from the squad for the T20 World Cup slated to be held later this year in the West Indies and the USA.

For now, at least, he can seek some comfort in the cold khubani ka meetha from Cafe Bahar in Himayatnagar.