As the Indian cricket team is gearing up for the World Test Championship (WTC) and the England series after, one question that bothered fans was the exclusion of pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
India named a 20-member Test squad last week for the tour of England as the team will play the WTC final against New Zealand in June as well as five Test matches against England in August-September.
The squad includes six pace bowlers and there are three pacers among the four players kept as standby. The selectors' decision saw that Bhuvi did not find a place even on the bench.
So what could be the reason for leaving Bhuvneshwar Kumar out?
The reason for keeping him out has come that the bowler has not played the longest format of the game for a long time now, especially since returning from an injury that he suffered during the IPL 2020 season.
"The selectors think that he is still not fit to play long format especially on such a long tour," said a source, according to Zee News.
Besides, India's pace bowling has done extremely well with the new guys included in the squad as seen in the Australia tour. Bhuvneshwar, in fact, has not played a first-class match since January 2018.
The last first-class he played was in January 2018 in the Test match against South Africa in Johannesburg. Since then, while he has been considered for white-ball formats, he has not been deemed fit for Test matches.
During IPL 2020, Bhuvneshwar had suffered a thigh muscle injury during a clash between SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) and Chennai Super Kings (CSK) on October 2. This injury ruled him out of India's tour of Australia.
He made a comeback to competitive cricket in the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20s as well as in the Vijay Hazare one-dayers. Following this, he was picked in the India squad for the white-ball series against England. He picked six wickets in three ODIs at an average of 22.5 and with an economy rate of 4.65.
In the five-match T20I series, he took four wickets at an average of 28.75 and an economy rate of 8.06.
India's squad for WTC Final and England Tests:
Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli (Captain), Ajinkya Rahane (vice-captain), Hanuma Vihari, Rishabh Pant (wicket-keeper), R. Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Jasprit Bumrah, Ishant Sharma, Mohd. Shami, Md. Siraj, Shardul Thakur, Umesh Yadav, KL Rahul (subject to fitness clearance), Wriddhiman Saha (wicket-keeper; subject to fitness clearance).
Standby players: Abhimanyu Easwaran, Prasidh Krishna, Avesh Khan, Arzan Nagwaswalla.
