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Shikhar Dhawan: Bhuvneshwar Kumar is the best death bowler in the world

Do you agree with Shikhar Dhawan?

Indian cricket team’s opening batsman Shikhar Dhawan has revealed that the best death overs bowler in the world is Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Kumar has been performing consistently well recently and has been an important cog in the Indian wheel. Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah destroyed the New Zealand top order in the 2nd One Day International at Pune, which India won by 6 wickets. Bhuvneshwar bagged three scalps, two of which came in the first seven overs and helped India restrict the visitors to 230/9. Bhuvneshwar Kumar also showed a new weapon he has added to his repertoire which is a knuckleball. In fact, he picked up a wicket with that new delivery as well.

Dhawan while raising Bhuvaneshwar, said, 

Bhuvneshwar has raised his level and his control is very good. Not just at the start, even when he is bowling slower deliveries or knuckle balls, he makes sure that he is pitching the ball in the right areas. When it comes to the death overs, he is the best bowler in the world.

Highlighting the big reason why India won the 2nd ODI, the Indian opener said,

The bowlers did half the job for us by restricting them (New Zealand) to 230. The pressure that is there chasing 230 is obviously lesser than when the target is 280 or 300. We played the new ball better than them. We didn’t lose (too many) wickets. There wasn’t any seam movement by our bowlers but they played a very good, tight line and did the job for us.

Talking about Dinesh Karthik, Dhawan said, 

Dinesh has done a lot of hard work. He has made so many runs in domestic cricket and the reward for that is that he got a place in the Indian team. Dhawan said that Karthik remains “one of the best middle-order batsmen” in the country. Today he played such a good knock and his runs were very useful in the previous match also. He also rotates the strike very well and that takes a lot of pressure on the other batsmen. For example, I was not able to rotate the strike as well as I wanted but Dinesh was doing that at the other end because of which I was not feeling too much pressure.

WATCH – Bowling blueprints with @Jaspritbumrah93 and @BhuviOfficial – by @RajalArora https://t.co/nQvS7GMPaw #INDvNZ pic.twitter.com/LPhGzQcBaP

— BCCI (@BCCI) October 26, 2017

India will play the decider at Kanpur’s Green Park Stadium, which is expected to be a run-fest.