Indian fast bowler Umesh has proved himself whenever he got a chance to play for the national side. However, there are many instances when he was not preferred in Tests over Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, and Ishant Sharma. However, Umesh is included in the Test squad against Australia and got the opportunity to play the 3rd Test and performed brilliantly as he took 3 wickets on the spinning track.
Meanwhile, India’s veteran wicketkeeper-batter Dinesh Karthik heaped praise on Umesh as he recalls his early journey during a show. He said that Umesh tried to be part of the police academy but couldn’t succeed and then he started practising fast bowling, which eventually worked for him and he became India’s one renowned pacer.
“You have to understand his roots. He is a coal miner’s son and tried being part of the police academy. That did not work out and then he went into fast bowling and his growth rate at that stage, from 2008, when he started playing for Vidarbha, he made it to the Indian team in 2010, that’s a growth fast rate. Then he kept going still a certain point and the plateaued. When it happens to any cricketer, you feel hard done by. He is no different and he must have felt sad,” Karthik said in Cricbuzz’s ‘Rise of New India Show’.
He was always overlooked at times: Dinesh Karthik
Umesh is one of the few bowlers in India to have taken 100 or more wickets on home soil. The Indian pacer has taken 168 wickets in 55 Test matches, while he has 106 wickets in 75 ODIs. Umesh has taken 12 wickets in 9 T20 International matches. Meanwhile, Karthik even said that the right-arm pacer often gets ignored by the team management.
“When you have an attack like Bumrah and Shami, the third one was always between Ishant and Umesh and a lot other times it would be Ishant, Shami, and Umesh. But when they played two medium pacers in India it became Ishant and Shami at times.
“He was always overlooked at times and that must have really hurt him because every time he came in he produced a two or three-wicket performance but was never good enough to hold on to that place. You know he was thrown out…I think the hardest time was when he was unsold at an auction. That must have hurt him really bad,” he said.
