Contemporary Versus History: A Spin Debate

- V. Ramnarayan

Not too long ago, Ravichandran Ashwin became the bowler to reach 250 Test wickets soonest in cricket history. Last year, he won the ICC Cricketer of the Year award, the only Indian after Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar to do so. In the 2016-17 season, he achieved a record haul of 79 wickets, besides being jointly ranked with Ravindra Jadeja as ICC’s No. 1 bowler. Jadeja and he routed New Zealand, England and Australia during the season.

AMAZINGLY, the ODI and T20I future of these two champion bowlers seems to hang in the balance. The reason has been the impressive strides made by two wrist spinners Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav. And who knows, at least one of them could well be challenging the finger spinners for a slot in the Test XI in the foreseeable future. Depending on the conditions, particularly abroad, only one slow bowler will probably make it to the playing XI, especially in Test matches. The resultant competition promises to be the topsy-turviest situation in Indian cricket in a long while, with a bowling problem of plenty staring the selectors in their face.

The irony of it all is that the inclusion of chinaman specialist Kuldeep Yadav in the team for the Dharamsala Test match (in the absence of the injured skipper Virat Kohli) against the touring Australians last year is rumoured to have been partially responsible for a rift between Kohli (said to have been against it) and coach Kumble (who pushed it through) leading to the coach’s resignation. Happily, the team management has obviously realised the advantages of including wrist spin in the bowling menu, even — or especially — in ODI cricket, targeting the Australians with a double-barrelled attack from the right- arm Chahal and left-arm Kuldeep Yadav, brilliantly supported by the pacemen, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Umesh Yadav and Jasprit Bumrah, besides all-rounder Hardik Pandya.