Did India leave Kuldeep out for right reasons?
Not playing Kuldeep for ‘variety' is in line with conventional thinking.
Virat Kohli said he has “no regrets” not playing Kuldeep Yadav at Chepauk. “Not at all. When you play two off-spinners, Kuldeep more or less becomes a similar bowling option with him (not) taking the ball away. You need variety in the bowling attack. So we were quite clear on the combination we wanted to play.”
“So there are no regrets in that decision. Moving forward, we will think of combinations that will give us variety in the bowling attack. Not one dimensional, so these things are very important going forward.”
Virat spoke with conviction behind his call in that post-match presser. It wouldn’t be Virat if he didn’t speak with conviction. But while impressed how the captain backed his selection call, I wasn’t so amused by the ‘nature' of the logic behind the call.
With Jadeja unavailable and Ashwin no longer a No.7 batter (yes, even at home sadly), the only way India could’ve played five bowlers was if they went with Sundar, who batted with great resolve at the Gabba and continued in the same vein at Chepauk. Ishant and Bumrah made the side too, leaving only one position vacant in the attack. In hindsight, India would’ve been better off giving Siraj the nod against this English side but they opted to play Nadeem. Nadeem, a veteran of over 400 first-class wickets, had a bad game and that increased the scrutiny over Kuldeep’s non-selection.
When the news of Jadeja being injured and not available for the whole series did the rounds, I thought here’s a great opportunity for Kuldeep to play four home Test matches and get his career back on track at the highest level. Ashwin being there at the other end, I felt, will only further help the youngster.
But then India didn’t play him. And, as Virat explained, that was because they felt once they have got two off-spinners playing together, they needed someone to take the ball away from the right-handers. Conventionally, you’d think there’s sound cricketing logic behind that call. But that’s where I have an issue. How much you really need to beat the right-hander’s outside edge to be considered as a varying option for an attack? Kuldeep, being a rare left-arm wrist-spinner, brings the ball back into the right-handers and takes it away from the lefties through his conventional line. So his case is naturally different to all right-arm leg-spinners. But isn’t that an advantage to be exploited?
Bringing the ball in to the right-handers is traditionally felt to be easy pickings through the on-side. We seldom acknowledge how it also means the bowler is bringing the stumps into play, which therefore means two most frequent modes of dismissals — the bowleds and the LBWs — always being in play. In Test cricket, the stump line is also treated with greater respect, and thus if you’re regularly threatening the three sticks, you are bound to keep a leash on run-scoring too: as a spinner, part of Kuldeep’s job at Chepauk would’ve been to provide his side ‘control’. It’s not to suggest Kuldeep would’ve definitely keep things tight — he has an economy of 3.51 after 6 Tests — but, in general, you are far more likely to go economical in Tests if you are aiming for the stumps and the area close to the off-stump.
How much do you really need to beat the outside edge to get right-handers out? When I recently wrote about Siraj, I mentioned that his line is generally aimed at the stumps. Siraj, however, through a split-second accidental change of height and angle of release points, is able to create a deception of the line. In effect, Siraj is able to make batsman play false lines and lengths. If we focus on the ‘lines' alone, it’s no surprise he has gotten many batsmen out bowled and LBW at the first-class level.
Applying the same logic for a left-arm wrist-spinner operating from ‘around-the-wicket' angle to a right-hander, wouldn’t the use of the width of the crease and creating a deception of the angle, suffice? At the end of the day, you don’t need to beat the inside or the outside edge by a mile. Making the batsman play a tad inside or outside the actual line of the ball — not the one the batsman has perceived — is often good enough to induce the edge or sneak through the gap between the bat and the front-pad. When Kuldeep got his five-fer in Sydney, he got Tim Paine out bowled via a ball that beat the inside edge while Paine went for a big booming cover-drive. That’s the other thing we forget when we speak of Kuldeep from the ‘conventional' lense: how he can force the right-handers to play against the spin to try and exploit the off-side. R Ashwin, when he is at his best, bowls without the cover fielder for this reason.
Remember Zaheer Khan? Zak didn’t exactly move the ball away from the right-hander when he operated from ‘around-the-wicket' angle. Few balls straightening after pitching over a spell were good enough for Zak to create a doubt in the batsman’s mind. He got many batsmen out from that angle playing a tad inside or outside the line. Can’t Kuldeep use his googly or the straighter one to the same effect as Zak did from that angle against the right-handers? Against the left-handers from the ‘over-the-wicket’ angle, can’t he be just as effective as off-spinners mixing his googly that comes in along with the stock ball that goes away?
Also, Ashwin, Sundar and Kuldeep all bringing the ball in to the right-hander, doesn’t mean their release-points, speeds through the air and revs on the ball, variations, etc are of same kind. You don’t need to create a big illusion, a semblance of it does the trick fine at the top-level. When we close our eyes and think of Anil Kumble, we don’t think of right-handers getting beaten on the outside edge by a mile. We can all vividly recall him getting multiple right-handers bowled and LBW. Anil was a completely different bowler to Kuldeep, of course. But the point stands firm, you don’t really need to be taking the ball ‘away' from the off-stump to be successful at the Test level and neither do you really need to pick or leave out someone for the sake of ‘variety' if two other bowlers in the attack offer the same ‘conventional' ploy. So while there’s undeniable logic behind Virat and his team’s call, it’s the conventionality of the logic that we should be having an issue with.
Virat wouldn’t obviously say it but had he hinted that they felt on a slow wicket Kuldeep could’ve been negotiated well from the backfoot, that would’ve made more tactical sense, doesn’t it? Pace through the air and off the deck has been an issue with Kuldeep, something Root took advantage of during that 2018 one-day series. Many over Twitter felt, on a really slow Chepauk track — on days 1 and 2 it behaved too slow for an Indian track — that this issue of Kuldeep’s yet developing game would’ve stand exposed. It’s something I agree with. But few would’ve thought the track will be as flat as it was on the first two days (Ishant said it felt like a “road”). Not just the slowness, I’m sure, Kuldeep is busy upskilling his whole game from the sidelines. But how much can he really learn in the nets, just being around the squad?
Leave this series aside — England look like a side that will be troubled more facing the pace of Siraj on Indian tracks than spin — but do India have a plan to ensure Kuldeep takes the next step as a Test match bowler in near future? It’s been two years since Ravi Shastri hailed him as India’s №1 spinner abroad. Bar a tour match versus Australia A, that Sydney Test happens to be the last time Kuldeep turned up in whites in ‘proper’ competitive cricket, let alone for India. Neither has he been regular bowling to international batsmen in white-ball cricket, nor is he likely to have the time to play any form of red-ball cricket if he is picked as part of the Indian all-format squads. Other spinners are now being deemed closer to the Indian Test XI than Kuldeep — if Nadeem had grabbed his opportunity, there wouldn’t have been an uproar over his selection, and now there is also competition from the likes of Axar Patel, Rahul Chahar. Will Kuldeep drop himself from the squad so that he can have time to turn up for UP in Ranji Trophy, India A or for a county side in the UK? I’m not sure and neither do I expect him to leave aside IPL riches to prosper at the Test level (even the affable Pujara beholds IPL dreams, you know). And so, Kuldeep is just as sure of his Test match future as we are of our lives in these difficult times.
