Bhuvneshwar Kumar emerges once again to launch RCB into the IPL 2026 final

Bhuvneshwar Kumar last played for India in November 2022, in the ill-fated T20 World Cup semi-final against England, a match that would later change the way white-ball cricket is played in India. While some of the greats of Indian cricket reshaped the game, Bhuvneshwar Kumar unfortunately ended up being one of its victims.

This kind of defeat followed by sidelining is usually a guaranteed farewell to top-flight cricket. And yet here we are, three-and-a-half years later, with Bhuvneshwar Kumar holding the Purple Cap again. The fast bowler has taken 26 wickets this season, equaling his highest ever tally in the Indian Premier League. At the age of 36, he has now reached the final in the toughest cricket league in the world.

Qualifier 1, RCB vs GT: Highlighting | Scorecard

While he was part of a supporting cast led by the exceptional Josh Hazlewood in 2025, Bhuvneshwar Kumar has come into his own this season, leading the charge from the front in his typically unassuming manner. On Tuesday, that humility was on display again when Bhuvi spoke after the winning performance. On a night when the ball was expected to fly out of the park, the right-handed pacer returned figures of 4/0/28/2 to break the back of the Gujarat Titans batting line-up in IPL Qualifier 1.

The Dharamsala bowlers had a tough task on Tuesday. They needed to find the exact length at which the ball would not disappear for runs. Bowl a bit too full and the batsmen didn’t even need to keep the ball on the ground; the bowl a bit shorter and the pitch didn’t have enough zip to bother them.

It was incredibly difficult work, so much so that two world-class fast bowlers, Mohammed Siraj and Kagiso Rabada, conceded at economy rates of 13 and 15. The bowler is playing his first match of IPL 2026, Kulwant Khejroliya conceded 28 runs in a single over. And yet Bhuvi, playing against one of the most consistent top threes in the IPL, hardly gave anything away.

How does he keep doing it? The question was easily asked when he appeared on the post-match show alongside Ravichandran Ashwin and Irfan Pathan.

The answer lies in how he got his game down to a science. At a time when modern T20 cricket requires bowlers to constantly search for new variations, Bhuvi’s rebirth this season has actually come from doing less.

It had been his weapon of choice for years. However, he has significantly reduced his use this season. Instead, he turned towards the scrambled seam, a deliberate tactic designed to create constant uncertainty in the batsman’s mind. When the ball lands on the tangled seam on flat Indian pitches, the batsman cannot predict whether it will snap, slide or linger above the surface.

“You’re absolutely right. We’ve certainly talked about swing and angles, but using the weave seam that you saw more of today and that we’ve used quite a bit this season was a very well thought out strategy,” he explained.

“I think I’ve got enough experience now with the reading conditions, so it (the knee) wasn’t needed much this season. What was needed more was the entangled seam.”

What makes Bhuvi so effective at 36 is his ability to adapt on the fly. He does not enter the game with fixed ideas. It took him exactly six balls in Qualifier 1 to realize that his original plan to swing the new ball had to be abandoned. While watching Jacob Duffy over the first over, Bhuvi adjusted his strategy even before he delivered his first ball.

“When Duffy bowled first, I was going to bowl second and somewhere in my mind I realized it wasn’t going to swing much. So all these things are part of our planning. It’s not like we just bowl randomly. There’s always planning behind understanding how the wicket behaves.”

While the younger, faster bowlers like Siraj and Rabada struggled to find their length on the Dharamsala surface and escaped runs, Bhuvi relied on his processing speed. He understood the pitch faster than anyone else on the pitch.

He was left behind by the national team in 2022 as Indian cricket wanted to switch to a different template. But three-and-a-half years later, with 26 wickets and a Purple Cap to his name, Bhuvneshwar Kumar has shown that simple, clear-headed planning can still dismantle the best batting line-ups in the world. Royal Challengers Bengaluru are in the finalsand it was their most experienced pitcher who led them there.

– The end

Issued by:

Amar Panicker

Published on:

27 May 2026 11:00 AM IST