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Will Kuldeep Yadav play within the Lord’s Test? Shubman Gill’s assessment of him makes it seem unlikely.
Indian spin bowler Kuldeep Yadav (PTI)
Since Kuldeep Yadav made his Test debut in Dharamsala in 2017, he has played the identical variety of Tests as Morne Morkel — 13. Morkel retired in 2018 and is currently India’s bowling coach.
That sums up the frustration Indian fans feel with regard to Kuldeep’s place on this Indian team. In that Dharamsala Test, India took the daring decision to bring him in for the injured Virat Kohli. A debutant wrist spinner replacing a batting great and a captain, within the decider of a heated Border-Gavaskar Trophy, was unexpected. However it worked out perfectly, with Kuldeep’s 4 wickets helping India win.
Soon, Ravi Shastri, the then-coach, labeled him as India’s first-choice spinner in overseas Tests. But, fast-forward to England 2025, and India can’t discover a place for him, although Ashwin has retired.
He’s unlucky to be in an era of Gautam Gambhir’s defensive coaching, where aggressive bowling is at all times a second priority behind the security of batting depth. Even on flat tracks where even six batters are enough, when Jasprit Bumrah has been all but pleading for support, and against a team who’s front-footed style will suit him to bits, Kuldeep has missed each Tests of the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy at Headingley and Edgbaston.
India won the second, but that victory was led by the middle-order and bowlers, not by depth or all-rounders. Will he, then, be in for a probability for the third Test at Lord’s?
Captain Shubman Gill’s comments after the second suggest otherwise.
“It’s very tempting when you have got a bowler like Kuldeep,” he said. “One in all the the explanation why I desired to play Washington was because he gives us the batting depth. And the very first thing is, I feel the partnership between me and Washington may be very vital. If there was no partnership, then I feel our lead would have been 70-80-90 runs, which is psychologically very different from 180 run lead,” Gill added.
More importantly, the young skipper explained that unless the pitches show obvious signs for offering turn, India will go for the ‘control’ provided by the finger spinners.
“As much as we expected, even on the fifth day, the ball was not moving that much from the center, it was just moving from the rough. We thought that…possibly on our fifth day, a spinner will give us more control if the ball is moving from the wicket. And particularly on such (flat) wickets, sometimes spin gives you more control than fast bowling. In order that was our mindset,” Gill said.
Lord’s has been historically even less helpful for spinners. Brendon McCullum, England’s coach, has gone public asking for a bouncy and seaming pitch at the bottom, which is nice for Kuldeep as he’d have the opportunity to get more out of it than Sundar and Ravindra Jadeja. But even someone like Nathan Lyon, who also enjoys such conditions, has averaged just 51.86 at the bottom.
Greater than the proven fact that India are coming off a win, they’ll likely make the straightforward change of getting Jasprit Bumrah in for Prasidh Krishna. They may be tempted to get one other bowler in, but when Lord’s is as green as McCullum wants, it’d likely be Arshdeep Singh for certainly one of the all-rounders.
A team of reporters, writers and editors brings you news, analyses, features, live scores, results, stats and all the pieces that’s cricket from all around the globe. Follow @cricketnext
A team of reporters, writers and editors brings you news, analyses, features, live scores, results, stats and all the pieces that’s cricket from all around the globe. Follow @cricketnext
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