South Africa head coach Mark Boucher termed India seamer Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s performance in the T20I series as “special”. Bhuvneshwar, who was adjudged Man of the Series, got six wickets in four completed games and gave away only 85 runs in 14 overs at an economy of just a shade above six runs per over.

“Bhuvi was special in this whole series as we came up against some quality bowling. He put us under pressure in Powerplays and barring one game (Delhi), where we got off to a good start, they have dominated us with both ball and bat in Powerplays,” Boucher said after the series ended 2-2 after the final game was abandoned in Bangalore because of rain.

However, losing Aiden Markram owing to Covid-19 at the start of the series had a huge impact, felt the head coach.

“It was tough losing him even before we started the first game. We wanted to play six batters with Aiden being our sixth option and we couldn’t do that,” Boucher added.

The long IPL did make the players tired and that also had an effect on the final outcome, he felt.

“We didn’t play our best cricket and it was quite tough on our IPL players to stay throughout the whole IPL and then come to India back-to-back as well,” he said. “Guys are little bit tired as well. So they will all enjoy the break and (having learnt a) lot of lessons in World Cup year… And see, if we can plug a few gaps going into Australia.”

Boucher lauded the depth of the Indian cricket system created by the IPL. “I know there weren’t a lot of top (India) players over here but the depth that Indian cricket has at the moment largely due to the IPL, they can take lot of confidence as well.

“You just can’t wake up in India and expect to win a series as well. So, we played a couple of good games and two bad games,” he added.

(Written with PTI inputs)