Indian pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar reckons that South Africa’s plan to bowl short-pitched deliveries to the Indian batsmen out failed inadequately in the first T20 in Johannesburg. In comparison, India bowled brilliantly and mixed things up with a combination of short balls and slower ones. And he would know, he picked up his maiden five-wicket haul in T20Is on Sunday as the India bowlers curtailed South Africa to 175/9 to seal a 28-run win.

During the post-match press conference, Kumar said, “What I was trying to do is bring about the change of pace in my bowling. I just wanted to take the pace off the ball because I knew it won’t be easy to hit the ball and that’s what I did. The important thing is how you mix your deliveries according to the wicket.”

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He further added, “For instance, today (Sunday) we bowled a lot of slow balls. It was a part of our strategy on this wicket, to do away with pace and make it difficult for the batsmen to score. Apart from line and length, it is important to understand how you want to mix your deliveries. It matters. Today, for instance, it was about bowling slow.”

However, a plenty of work in India’s victory was done by the opener Shikhar Dhawan who scored 72 runs from 39 balls to take India to a huge score of 203/5. Led by 78 runs in the powerplay overs, India didn’t let the momentum go down for the most part to notch their highest T20 score against South Africa.

Talking about the same, Bhuvi said, “Whenever India goes abroad, the reputation is that India is not good at batting against short bowling. This time we haven’t seen that thing. Today they bowled 5-6 overs of short bowling to us early on and it really backfired on them. Whatever the reputation we had, in the last few years we are playing totally opposite of that. They wanted to bowl short but it didn’t really work well for them.”

Bhuvneshwar also hailed the entire team for a complete performance – with the bat, ball and in the field. He said, “It was a complete performance from us. When we went in there, we knew what we wanted to do as best as a bowling team. The momentum was on our side and if momentum is on your side, you have got to make it count. Credit has to go the Indian team for the way we have played in every department.”

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The right-arm pacer has been a standout performer for India across formats on the tour. He has been effective with the ball and also with the vat he has chipped in with crucial runs. He asserted that it has been possible due to his ability to manage workload which has thus helped his fitness. He said, “First thing, it comes with fitness. It’s not easy playing all three formats, especially on a single tour. So the first thing before coming here what I wanted to do is manage workload. I wanted to practice but in a specific way, so as to not put extra workload on the bod.”

Team India was asked to bat first by stand-in South Africa skipper JP Duminy. At the time, Virat Kohli stated he too preferred to bowl first but in the end, despite losing the toss, India performed well as their reading of the pitch and the strategy to be deployed was pretty apt. Bhuvneshwar explained, “After we batted, we had a certain idea of the kind of wicket we would be bowling on after what we saw. But the whole picture begins to emerge only after you’ve bowled because it depends on the bowlers.”

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He further elaborated, “Look at their bowlers, they’re of a different height and have different skill sets. So you get an idea but as I said, the whole thing emerges only after you’ve bowled a few balls. For instance, if I’ve bowled the first over, I can communicate with the rest of the bowlers what’s happening on the wicket, like that.”

Even with South Africa looking like a depleted unit, Bhuvi stressed that they cannot be taken lightly. He concluded, “If you look at the one-day series and now, yes they’ve been vulnerable. But South Africa is not that kind of team (to be considered fragile). It happens to any team in the world when things don’t go your way or plans don’t fall in place but that doesn’t mean they’re a weak team or they’re not a good team.”