The truth, as best as Bhuvneshwar can reconstruct it, begins somewhere around the age of 14 or 15, with a bowling action that went wrong.<\/p>\n
He had come to the game late, by serious cricket\u2019s standards. When he first bowled in the nets, the coaches told him the ball was swinging. It seemed normal to him. The other kids swung it too. He didn\u2019t know there was anything unusual about his hands until the coaches kept saying it, and even then it was only when he played under-17 cricket that he started to understand what they meant.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was mainly an inswinger when I started playing cricket,\u201d he says. \u201cSome part of the action changed \u2014 think I must have been around 15-16 perhaps. And I started outswinging. Slowly, I understood how to outswing, inswing. This is my luck. I won\u2019t say I was born with it, or someone taught me. It was my luck that some action went wrong, but luckily I understood how to swing on both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some actions went wrong. Most cricketers spend careers trying to prevent that. Bhuvneshwar\u2019s career was built on it. The outswinger, the delivery that would eventually put him on the Lord\u2019s honours board and make Tendulkar watch a video and think about seam angles, came from something he didn\u2019t intend and couldn\u2019t quite explain.<\/p>\n
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\u201cNo one taught me how to swing on both sides,\u201d he says. The coaches who shaped him are Vipin Vats, who also taught Praveen Kumar, and Sanjay Rastogi. Both from Meerut. He says he was lucky to have them.<\/p>\n
At home in those years, the 10-year-old would return from training so exhausted that eating was beyond him. His mother assigned his elder sister the daily duty of feeding him as he lay sprawled on the bed. His sister would feed him while he drooled on the pillow, already asleep. In Meerut, they call a man like this a karmath cricketer. A man who believes in the work, not the mythology around it.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
In January 2009, Bhuvneshwar Kumar was 18 years old and playing for Uttar Pradesh against Mumbai<\/a> in the Ranji Trophy. The night before he was due to bowl at Tendulkar, he dreamed about taking his wicket. Ashish Zaidi, the UP manager, found him and offered some counsel. Tendulkar isn\u2019t going to take your life. Worst case, six sixes. Don\u2019t do anything special. Fix a spot and bowl there.<\/p>\n On his 14th delivery to Tendulkar, Bhuvneshwar bowled full. The seam rushed across through the air, straight, before cutting in sharply to kiss the edge, onto the pad, popping up to a tumbling short midwicket. Tendulkar\u2019s first duck in Indian domestic cricket. Bhuvneshwar\u2019s phone was busy for two hours after the game.<\/p>\n Story continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Seventeen years later, the philosophy is unchanged. Fix a spot. Bowl there. Don\u2019t try anything special. The language has evolved: gut feeling, mental notes, wobble seam, body control. But the essence of his art hasn\u2019t changed.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \u201cNo, sir, till date, I haven\u2019t received any advice that has changed my life. There is not a single advice that has drastically changed my bowling, that has changed my life. Bowling is not that simple, you have to work hard for it.\u201d<\/p>\n What he controls is the preparation: a trainer, a physio, a dietitian, a schedule that runs through the off-season whether a tournament is approaching or not. \u201cThe schedule is very simple. Almost, if I\u2019m not on a holiday, the gym training goes on.\u201d<\/p>\n The mental notes he keeps are not written anywhere. They are things he has seen and become convinced of. He watched Praveen Kumar bowl for years. Not looking for one thing. Just watching. PK\u2019s bowling changed at some point because somebody told him to get as close to the stumps as possible, especially for his inswinger. Bhuvneshwar absorbed it. \u201cI think it\u2019s a gut feeling,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd gut feeling comes with experience.\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The bouncer arrived the same way.<\/p>\n Story continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At low pace, a bouncer is an invitation. Bowl it at 130 kilometres an hour and the batsman has time to pick the length, get into position, and clear the boundary with something to spare. This is cricket\u2019s received wisdom on medium-pace bowlers. Bhuvneshwar understood it and initially accepted it.<\/p>\n \u201cInitially, there was no confidence,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause it\u2019s low pace, you bowl a bouncer, it\u2019s a six.\u201d<\/p>\n But he kept trying it in practice, putting in extra effort on the delivery to see what happened. \u201cOnce or twice, it was fast. Then slowly I understood how to control the body. Slowly I started understanding that yes, if I put more effort than normal effort in a bouncer, it will come out extra. So I started trying it consciously in practice, then it became a habit.\u201d He found out the bouncer was working not from his own assessment but from his seniors in Ranji Trophy. \u201cSomeone said, your bouncer is fast. I thought, I don\u2019t know why he is saying that. Even I don\u2019t know. But slowly the seniors say that the bouncer is fast, then someone says, maybe that\u2019s why. Then slowly you understand things.\u201d<\/p>\n He reverse-engineered his own weapon from other people\u2019s surprise at it. In his international past, he had taken out Babar Azam with it. When a full outswinger was driven to the long-off boundary, he served a short nasty one next delivery and a startled Babar dollied a catch to short fine-leg.<\/p>\n Story continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
![\"Royal](\"https:\/\/images.indianexpress.com\/2026\/06\/Royal-Challengers-Bengaluru-Bhuvneshwar-Kumar.jpg\")
Royal Challengers Bengaluru\u2019s Bhuvneshwar Kumar bowls a delivery during the Indian Premier League final cricket match between Gujarat Titans and Royal Challengers Bengaluru in Ahmedabad, India, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo)<\/span>