Indian legend Sunil Gavaskar is of the view that the Indian selectors and the team management should move on from Bhuvneshwar Kumar and look at Deepak Chahar as an alternative option in ODI cricket for India going forward.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar has been preferred as the second seamer by the Indian team management for the first two ODIs against South Africa, and he has proven to be very expensive. And, these are not the only two games where Bhuvi has looked out of touch, he has actually looked lack lustrous for a while.
Even in the IPL, where he was playing for Sunrisers Hyderabad, Bhuvneshwar didn’t look anywhere near close to the quality he has shown consistently in his career with the ball and Sunil Gavaskar thinks it might be the case of the batsmen all around the world having figured him out now.
According to Gavaskar, who was speaking on Sports Today, Deepak Chahar has got the skillset which is very close to Bhuvi because he can swing the ball up front and then can bowl in the death as well with his change-ups, knuckle balls and odd yorkers. The good thing about Deepak is that he can also bat, and he has the ability to play the big shots down the order.
Even on the tour of Sri Lanka last year where the Indian team was playing their second-string XI because of the unavailability of the main players, Deepak had turned an ODI game around with his bat, scoring a half-century and finishing the game for India from a very tricky situation.
Deepak Chahar opens the batting for his state side Rajasthan
Deepak Chahar hasn’t got much of an opportunity to showcase his batting skills for his IPL side CSK as CSK already had a lot of batting depth in the last couple of seasons, but he actually opens the batting for his domestic side Rajasthan in the Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy.
Apart from being capable of matching Bhuvi’s quality with the ball, Deepak is also capable of contributing more than enough for India with the bat, batting towards the end of the innings and his all round package, in the opinion of Sunil Gavaskar, makes him a strong contender for a place in India’s ODI side.
Deepak is a part of India’s squad on the ongoing tour of South Africa as well and it’s very much possible he might get an opportunity in the third ODI tomorrow, with the series already being decided in the favor of South Africa.
