Australia bowled better than us: Bhuvneshwar Kumar

Indian seam bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar feels that Australia made good use of the pitch with the ball in hand on Tuesday in Guwahati. The visitors came up with a thoroughly dominating performance against India and thumped them by 8 wickets to level the series by 1-1. The third and final T20 International of the series now will be played in Hyderabad on October 13. The decider promises to be a cracker of a contest which has been missing since Australian team has landed in the country.

Jason Behrendorff wreaked havoc in the Indian camp after David Warner chose to bowl first. He scalped the top order of the Indian batting line-up as Adam Zampa snaffled the wickets of MS Dhoni and Kedar Jadhav. Men in Blue somehow managed to crawl on a tough wicket to 118. In reply, Aussies to were rocked with early wickets but the duo of Moises Henriques and Travis Head made sure there were no further hiccups in the chase and won the game for their side.

No wickets in the middle overs cost us the game

Bhuvneshwar Kumar has expressed that they needed to pick wickets in the middle overs in order to defend a low total and admitted that their counterparts bowled well. “It was a tough wicket for batting. Rain was around, it was a damp. So you know, Australian bowlers made the most of the wicket. We tried our best to take initial wickets. If you have to win the match, you have to keep taking wickets especially in the middle overs which we couldn’t do. I would say they bowled better than us,” he said.

The swing bowler also praised Behrendorff for bowling exceptionally in only his second international game. “I think we tried to rebuild it again. But we couldn’t do it. We can’t really point a finger on someone and say it was their fault. It was just an off day for us. He [Behrendorff] bowled really well. He made full use of the wicket. It was the perfect kind of wicket for the line and length he bowled. You need to be bit fortunate to get three or four wickets in the T20s. Rohit Sharma’s wicket and Kohli’s wicket were the crucial point for us, in the first over itself,” he added.

The left arm quick from Australia bowled his four overs upfront but Virat Kohli didn’t do it with his Indian seamers. When asked if the skipper missed a trick on the field, the 27-year-old said, “That is something part of a strategy… what the captain is thinking, what he wants to do. He made us bowl three overs each in the Powerplay and we took a wicket each. It is up to him if he wanted us to bowl, we could have completed our quota. But that was his [Virat Kohli] thinking. We can’t really say we could have bowled the way we began.”