Lack Of Long Format Cricket Reason Behind Bhuvneshwar Kumar's Exclusion

Bhuvneshwar Kumar's exclusion from the Test squad to England may have been surprising but the lack of competitive multi-day cricket in recent times is being considered the reason behind Uttar Prad

Bhuvneshwar, in fact, has not played a first-class match since January 2018. The last first-class he played was the January 24-27 Test match in 2018 against South Africa in Johannesburg.

Since then, while he has been considered for white-ball formats as his death-overs bowling has improved, he has not been deemed fit for Test matches.

Bhuvneshwar suffered a thigh muscle injury during a clash between SunRisers Hyderabad and Chennai Super Kings on October 2 in IPL 2020. That ruled him out of India's tour of Australia.

He made a comeback to competitive cricket in the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20s as well as Vijay Hazare one-dayers following which he was picked in the India squad for the white-ball series against England.

He picked six wickets in three ODIs at an average of 22.5 and with an economy rate of 4.65. In the five-match T20I series, he took four wickets at an average of 28.75 and an economy rate of 8.06.