Bhuvi baffled by lack of swing

London, June 12: It is inexplicable when a white ball refuses to offer swing for seamers in English conditions and Bhuvneshwar Kumar has altered his strategy after failing to understand why this is happening during the ongoing ICC Champions Trophy here. Bhuvneshwar has bowled 22.3 overs across three games taking four wickets for 100 runs at a very decent economy rate of 4.44, given the field restrictions in Powerplays are loaded heavily in favour of batsmen. “It’s very difficult to point out why the ball is not swinging in England. The wickets are not generally this hard in England during this time of the year. During the Champions Trophy in 2013 and the next year during Test series, wickets were soft.

“Not very soft that batsmen would encounter problems but soft enough for some deviation,” Bhuvneshwar said.

India’s leading seamer is, however, baffled and failed to pinpoint whether it is the quality of white kookaburra to be blamed.

“I don’t know whether that’s the reason or something to do with the quality of the balls, but as everyone is watching that it’s difficult for the bowlers to get swing.”

Swing bowlers normally have to pitch it up in order to either move the ball away or into the batsman but Bhuvneshwar decided to pull the length back a little in order to stifle runs.

Something he successfully did against South African duo of Quinton de Kock and Hashim Amla during their 76-run opening stand.