India pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar prepares to bowl. (File Photo)
Bhuvneshwar Kumar was the star performer for India during the recently concluded T20I series against South Africa picking six wickets from four games.
And the lanky swing bowler has impressed South Africa head coach Mark Boucher, who termed the Indian medium pacer's performance as 'special.'
India and South Africa drew the five-match T20I series 2-2 as the final T20I in Bengaluru was washed away due to rain on Sunday. Boucher, speaking of Bhuvneshwar's performance said that his team came up against some quality bowling and praised the swing bowler for putting his skills to good use.
"Bhuvi was special in this whole series as we came up against some quality bowling. He put us under pressure in Powerplays and barring one game (Delhi), where we got off to a good start, they have dominated us with both ball and bat in Powerplays," Boucher said.
South Africa took an early 2-0 lead after winning the first two T20Is in Delhi and Cuttack. With the series in the line, India staged a fightback by winning in Visakhapatnam and Rajkot.
South Africa ticked all boxes but suffered a blow when they lost Aiden Markram to Covid-19 at the start of the series. And Boucher said that losing Markram disturbed the balance of the side.
"It was tough losing Aiden Markram even before we started the first game. We wanted to play six batters with Aiden being our sixth option and we couldn’t do that,” Boucher said.
The former wicket-keeper further said that South African players were tired after participating in the IPL.
"We didn’t play our best cricket and it was quite tough on our IPL players to stay throughout the whole IPL and then come to India back-to-back as well. Guys are little bit tired as well. So they will all enjoy the break and (having learnt a) lot of lessons in World Cup year. And see, if we can plug a few gaps going into Australia albeit in different conditions," he said.
The South Africa coach further said that the IPL is a boon for Indian cricket.
“I know there weren’t a lot of top (India) players over here but the depth that Indian cricket has at the moment largely due to the IPL, they can take lot of confidence as well. You just can't walk up in India and expect to win a series as well. So, we played a couple of good games and two bad games and there are a couple of reasons for that, but you can’t get too much into it," he said.
