Luck Matters A Lot When You’re Up Against Him: Bhuvneshwar Kumar Lavishes Praise On Andre Russell

There is little denying that Bhuvneshwar Kumar is one of the best bowlers in limited-overs cricket at present. The India pacer is one of the very few bowlers in the world who can bowl at any stage of a T20I game without much problem. Time and again, Bhuvneshwar Kumar has shown in the IPL and in international cricket that he is one of the best in the business.

His arsenal is full with variations. Knuckle balls, slower balls, a deadly and swing – Bhuvneshwar Kumar has got it all. Over the years, he has locked horns against all the top batsmen in the world and has come out on top on a number of variations thanks to his impressive variations.

However, he believes that there is one batsman against whom he needs not only his variations but also some luck. The right-arm pacer was speaking about hard-hitting West Indies T20 superstar Andre Russell. Lavishing praise on the allrounder, Bhuvneshwar Kumar said that even his mishits go for a six.

“One thing which matters a lot is the ground you’re playing on. Dimensions of the ground, boundary and all matters a lot. You’re generally aware of the dimensions of the ground before the match, and you have a plan on where to bowl. But Russell is a powerful batsman, even his mishits go for a six, as we saw in the last IPL season. Luck matters a lot when you are up against him,” said Bhuvneshwar Kumar in a conversation with Deep Dasgupta on ESPNCricinfo.

“So somewhere down the line, you hope that he misses one ball. Or that his mistimed shots don’t go over the boundary. These things matter a lot. A lot of bowlers in the last IPL, including me, bowled yorkers on his legs and then one wide outside off to bluff him but he used to hit those balls for a six even while losing balance,” he added.

Andre Russell has established himself as one of the best T20 players in the world. He is widely considered as the most destructive batsmen in the shortest format of the game. In the previous two seasons of the IPL, he single-handedly won games for Kolkata Knight Riders with his stunning batting.

The right-handed batsman scored 510 runs at a breathtaking average of 56.66 and a breathtaking strike-rate of 204.81 in IPL 2019. Bhuvneshwar Kumar further recalled how Russell single-handedly took the game away from Sunrisers Hyderabad by slamming more than 50 runs in the last three overs of the match when the pacer was the captain last year.

“I remember the first match of the last IPL, where I was the captain and he scored 52-odd runs in the final three overs. I still remember two-three of his sixes were so long that normal batsmen wouldn’t have managed even after middling the ball,” he recalled.

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