For years, conversations around Bhuvneshwar Kumar carried the same caveat: “He’s one of the most skilful Indian bowlers, but can his body hold up?”
The question followed him through recurring injuries, selection calls and inevitable assumptions that accompany older fast bowlers. Before you knew it, Bhuvneshwar became a player people spoke about in the past tense.
This IPL season, he reminded everyone why that was a mistake. He finished with 28 wickets in 16 matches, just one behind Kagiso Rabada in the Purple Cap race for the top bowler of the season.
It was one of the most memorable bowling performances by a pacer, specifically because he was everywhere. He struck with the new ball, controlled phases in the middle overs and remained a wicket-taking threat at the death.
And he has done it at 36. When asked about the secret behind his resurgence, Bhuvneshwar’s answer rarely changed: fitness.
Behind that response lies years of work with strength and conditioning coach Surya Yadav, who has overseen a transformation that enabled him to be in his best shape possible.
The change, however, was never about becoming leaner or bulkier but about becoming stronger.
“People think age is the biggest factor. It isn’t,” Surya told HT. “First, we look at strength levels, muscle mass and injury history. If you’re fit and strong, age doesn’t matter.”
Surya’s programme for Bhuvneshwar was firm but effective. He was clear that if he had to survive, it couldn’t happen with the body that he came in with two years ago and so he pushed the pacer to become stronger than he had ever been.
Training differently
His squat numbers climbed from around 60kg to beyond 110kg, power cleans that once sat around 40kg now touch 80kg. Instead of isolated movements that focus on muscle hypertrophy, compound movements became the foundation of his workout splits.
“Big lifts matter,” Surya explained. “If your big lifts improve, everything improves. Hip drive improves. Force production improves. The body’s firing rate improves.”
Bhuvneshwar was never the fastest man in the room. He built a career on movement, precision and intelligence. Dinesh Karthik understandably called him the best pacer in India after Jasprit Bumrah before the auction last season. But cricket has evolved and skill alone is no longer enough. Pacers in particular need physical robustness to repeatedly execute under pressure.
Surya felt Bhuvneshwar’s body — which had already felt the blow of injuries in the lower back, hamstring, quadriceps, ankle and a sports hernia surgery — became too reliant on aerobic conditioning.
“He liked longer-duration strength work,” he said. “But I told him that to survive at this level, we had to give the body new shocks. We had to increase loads, activate the fast-twitch fibres and create more power.”
As strength levels increased, so did explosiveness. As body composition improved, so did movement. The gains were not designed to make Bhuvneshwar bowl 150kph rockets. They were designed to help him remain the best version of the bowler he already was, simply amplifying everything that had always made him special.
The line and length became more accurate, the new ball spells became more threatening, and his back bent as much as it needed to even when he surprised with the occasional short ball. As he did to remove Gujarat Titans opener Sai Sudharsan in the IPL final on Sunday.
Technical switch-up
Surya revealed that there was a technical element to the resurgence too. Years of bowling and a history of back trouble had altered Bhuvneshwar’s alignment, causing his chest to open up slightly through the action. The change affected his ability to generate outswing consistently. The correction was subtle, but the effect was visible.
“His chest started opening up a little and the swing reduced,” Surya said. “We worked on closing it back down again through back exercises and by repeatedly training the same movement pattern.”
For Surya, the discussion around Bhuvneshwar’s age — perhaps most dominant in selection meetings — misses the point entirely.
“They say he’s old. Why?” he asked. “Look around the world. Fast bowlers — James Anderson, Brett Lee, Mitchell Johnson — have played into their late thirties and forties. If you’re strong, if you’re fit and if your skills are there, why can’t you perform?”
What Bhuvneshwar produced this season was one of the finest IPL campaigns a fast bowler had in recent memory and if it wasn’t a question about skill but fitness, he seems to be answering that.
You’d expect a ‘veteran’ to be content with squeezing out a season but instead, Bhuvneshwar ended up showing that he could unlock another peak even at 36.
