Swinging into Success: Bhuvneshwar Kumar's Memorable ODI Debut

(Bhuvneshwar Kumar bowled Mohammad Hafeez on the first ball of his ODI debut)

It’s the year 2012 and India is playing Pakistan in a 3 match ODI series and every fan is looking forward to seeing India dominate the arch-rivals. In between all this, there is a 22 years old right-arm pacer from Meerut in Uttar Pradesh who is marking his run-up to deliver the first ball of his career to one of the best batters of that time, Mohammad Hafeez. Imagine the pressure on the shoulders of that young boy who is making his debut against such a big opposition in a high-pressure game. But what happened in his debut match has been the story of the career of Bhuvneshwar Kumar who has been one of the finest swing bowlers that India has ever produced.

When Bhuvneshwar Kumar bowled Mohammad Hafeez on the first ball...

In the month of December 2012, Pakistan visited Indian shores for a T20 and an ODI series to make things exciting for the fans. With the T20 series ending as 1-1, it was the time for the ODI series where both the teams were looking to settle the past scores against each other. The first match of the series was scheduled on 30th December 2012 at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chepauk in Chennai which is known to have a slow and tough pitch for the batters and here the spinners always have been on the top of their game.

India batted first on the slow pitch at Chennai and were soon blown out by the bowling of Junaid Khan who rattled the top order of the Indian team and picked the wickets of Virender Sehwag, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Yuvraj Singh to leave the Indian team at a position where they just had 29 runs on the board with a loss of 5 wickets in their 10 overs and hence the things looked out of the hands of the team in just the first match.

(Junaid Khan dismissed Virat Kohli for a duck in the first match of the ODI Series)

But it was the calm innings of MS Dhoni and his partnership with Ravichandran Ashwin that brought the team back into the game. His sublime innings of 113 runs from the 125 balls allowed the Indian team to post a competitive total of 227 runs with the loss of 6 wickets in their 50 overs while from the other end, he got the support of Suresh Raina also who got 43 runs from the 88 balls played. With this score, the Indian fans were looking to see the Indian team compete well in the match and they were surely having an advantage because of having the bowlers who had the skill to defend this total.

While coming to chase this total, the Pakistan team was looking easy because of their deep batting order and hence this was going to be tough for the Indian bowlers out there. With the opening pair of Mohammad Hafeez and Nasir Jamshed, it was time for the Indian team to unleash their key player who was making his debut, Bhuvneshwar Kumar who had the ability to swing the ball both ways in the first few overs. The early wickets were the key for the Indian team to defend this total and eventually go 1-0 up in the series.

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For the first over of the innings, MS Dhoni handed the ball to Bhuvneshwar Kumar and being on debut, he was looking to make his mark in the first over itself. On the first delivery, Mohammad Hafeez took the strike against him and to this, Bhuvneshwar Kumar started with an in-swing delivery which was bowled outside the off-stump and when it swung, it crashed into the off-stump as Hafeez left the delivery along thinking that it would go straight to the keeper.

The whole stadium erupted in joy and the Indian players celebrated well while Mohammad Hafeez was left stunned to see what happened with him on the first ball of the innings. Even while returning back to the pavilion, the Pakistan dugout was clueless and looked astonished to see Bhuvneshwar Kumar swinging the ball so well in just the first match of his career. In his first spell, there were too many “Plays and Misses” which made the whole stadium believe that the Indian team was back in the game and might pull up a win here. He even picked the wicket of Azhar Ali and brought Pakistan's score to 2-21 in the first 10 overs.

(Bhuvneshwar Kumar during the first match of the ODI series)

But after the spell of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, things started getting easier for the Pakistan batters and they played according to the match situation. The bowlers weren’t able to maintain the pressure well and hence the Pakistan’s batter, Nasir Jamshed finally got his century off just 132 balls and got the team to 228/4 in the 48 overs and chased down the total comfortably to allow the Pakistan team to go 1-0 up in the series. Despite bowling well in the first few overs of the innings, India wasn’t able to get back in the match and hence they faced a big loss at home at the start of the series.

After getting Mohammad Hafeez out on the first ball of the innings, there was a lot of buzz around Bhuvneshwar Kumar and many few people know that he is the only bowler who has dismissed Sachin Tendulkar for a duck in the Ranji Trophy game. With so much going around, things were already on the rise for this youngster and after the series loss against Pakistan, everyone wanted to know more about Bhuvneshwar Kumar for the betterment of the Indian team as he was the only bowler who had the ability to swing the ball well. But somehow due to injuries and poor form, Bhuvneshwar Kumar faded away and is now only seen in the IPL and other domestic Indian matches.