Former Indian Test spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has questioned the Indian team management for excluding Kuldeep Yadav from the ongoing Test series against England. With key bowlers like Akash Deep, Nitish Kumar Reddy, and Arshdeep Singh unavailable due to injury, Ashwin believes Kuldeep’s inclusion could have been a major boost. Instead, the team brought in Anshul Kamboj for the fourth Test at Manchester.
Speaking on his YouTube channel, Ashwin said that the Indian team is still stuck in an outdated mindset—focusing too much on batting depth while ignoring attacking bowling options.
“If somebody would have told me that Kuldeep Yadav will not be playing any part in the first four Tests, I would have been very very surprised. Unfortunately, it is our obsession with batting, and looking for those 20-30 extra runs. Gone are those days in England, that advantage of 20-30 runs is gone. If your No.7 makes 30 runs, and your No.8 makes 30 runs, you have extra 60 runs. Earlier that 60 runs used to be very useful, because bowlers used to get help from the pitch,” Ashwin said.
Ashwin also criticised the logic of preferring bowling all-rounders for their lower-order contributions, instead of deploying wicket-taking bowlers like Kuldeep.
“If you are only planning to give Shardul Thakur this many overs, and expect 20-30 runs from him. I love Shardul Thakur, I like him a lot, but if this is the usage point, why can’t you consider Kuldeep Yadav? It is just blowing my head away. I know it seems against the grain because there are three spinners, but it is not that way, Jadeja is a specialist batter for you now. Washington Sundar is also batting well. When your bowlers can bat so well, why are you not bringing an attacking bowler?” Ashwin added.
Meanwhile, England ended Day 2 on 225/2, still trailing India’s first-innings total of 358 by 133 runs in the Manchester Test.
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