Bhuvneshwar Kumar has been ruled out of the remainder of the Indian Premier League, due to an injury he sustained in Sunrisers Hyderabad’s game against chennai Super Kings Cricbuzz understands. In the 19th over of CSK’s chase, Bhuvneshwar limped off after just one ball, with Khaleel Ahmed finishing the remainder of his over. The nature of his injury is still awaited.
Bhuvneshwar featured in the first four games of the season, picking three wickets at an economy rate of 6.98. Inspite of their rich bowling reserves, his ouster will come as a big blow to SRH. Though SRH won their game against CSK that night, they went on to lose their next fixture against Mumbai Indians and are currently languishing in the second half of the table. Bhuvneshwar’s absence will also make their task of making it to the playoffs much more arduous from this point in the season.
The pacer’s tryst with injuries isn’t new. He missed 5 of the 17 games in IPL 2018 because of back troubles. In the same year, on India’s tour of England, he missed the third T20I and first two ODIs because of similar issues. He eventually returned home midway through the five-Test series. When West Indies toured India later in the year, he was rested to manage workload, in addition to being rested for the opening two ODIs of the five-match series as well.
Although Bhuvneshwar wasn’t a 100 per cent fit, he was part of India’s squad for the Australia Tests in 2018-19, but didn’t get a game subsequently. There were hamstring troubles for him at the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 , where he missed three games against Afghanistan, West Indies and England.
He wasn’t picked for the Test tour of West Indies, and missed the three Tests and the three-match T20I series against South Africa with a side strain. When Bangladesh were in India towards the end of the year, he missed the three T20Is with injury. He wasn’t part of the Test side, but joined the squad in Indore and Kolkata to prepare for the T20I series against West Indies.
