Kuldeep conundrum continues for India

IT'S difficult being Kuldeep Yadav. Even more so with each passing day with your team on a downward spiral and you cannot do much other than watching the horror show helplessly from outside the boundary ropes. For the fourth time on a trot, the left-arm wrist spinner could not find a place in the playing XI in this England tour.

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The team management instead decided to go with its approach of adding more depth to the batting department by including two all-rounders.

On the Old Trafford surface which is known to give some purchase to a specialist spinner as the game progresses, India decided to bring in fast bowlingall-rounder Shardul Thakur in place of injured Nitish Kumar Reddy. Agreed, they did have spin bowling-allrounders in form of Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar but the former has impressed more as a batter than as a bowler in the series so far. He scalped four wickets in the ongoing Test but by then England had already taken a huge first innings lead of 311 runs to push the visitors to the wall.