For most onlookers, Kuldeep Yadav might be the unluckiest man in Test cricket. In a career spread over eight years, he had bowled in only 24 innings; one every sixth turn has yielded a five-for; he averages 22.16; strikes every 37th ball. But has featured in only one of India’s last 13 Test, painting a flattering picture of India’s spinner riches.
Yet, it is just a false ceiling that conceals the crumbling roofs. The team management, the sources say, are concerned about India’s shallow spin-bowling stocks, which could be put to test in this WTC cycle. Eleven of the next 13 Tests could be played in Asia. The foursome of Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep, Axar Patel and Washington Sundar, are good enough to run through sides. Worryingly though, the options stop with the quartet. No seasoned domestic veteran is dynamiting the selectors’ door, no young prodigy is making them scramble to different corners of the domestic field. Three of them are in their 30s; Jadeja would turn 37 at the end of the year. If one of them gets injured or experiences a prolonged loss of form, there is not a queue of eager competitors eager to pounce.
The configurations of the spinners picked for the Duleep Trophy, filtered from the finest cricketers in every zone based on their performance the previous domestic season, presents a truer diagnosis of India’s declining spin-bowling health. Of the 19 the five teams have gathered, 11 are left-arm spinners, six of them are off-spinners and two, including Kuldeep, are wrist spinners. Among them, eight of them are classified all-rounders, but of varying degrees of batting aptitude.
A few broad patterns manifest. The renaissance of the left-arm spinners. The emphasis of run-making utility (the only reason why Kuldeep is a restricted force), making the specialist, in the strictest sense of the word, a cricketing unicorn. Domestic sides are increasingly intolerant to one-dimensional cricketers, just like strikers are made to defend and defenders made to play-make in football. The acute shortage of wrist spinners. A tale of inexorable divergence of the red and white ball, and the increasing specialisation of roles.
Like most trends in sport, the law of the market dictates the commodities that emerge. It’s the age of the IPL and the talents that surface in this time are at least subconsciously conditioned by the desire to perform in the league. Franchises fetishes left-arm spinners who could bat. They don’t chase orthodox off-spinners. The most expensive, to date, has been CSK rolling out Rs 9.75 crore for Ravi Ashwin in 2011. They break banks for wrong’un spewing wrist-spinners.
Paradoxically, a golden generation of wrist-spin bowling is out there but they are not playing Test cricket. Seven of the top-10 ranked spinners in the world are leg-spinners, but only two rank in the top-50 in Tests. Kuldeep and Pakistan’s Abrar Ahmed, with a grand total of 23 Tests between them. Kuldeep averages 13 with the bat, Abrar 8.50. This explains why they are easily compromised. Nearly every Test regular is a finger spinner. And almost every one bats.
The route to reaching Test cricket too is different too. All of Jadeja, Axar and Washington played T20Is first before claiming the Test stripes. Shahbaz Nadeem was the last Indian spinner to wear the Test cap before white-ball initiation. None of the tweakers among the top-10 wicket-takers in the last five years of Ranji Trophy had been in the vicinity of the national team. Among the pile, Mumbai’s Tanush Kotian came the closest when he flew to Australia after Ashwin retired during the series.
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The tall Mumbai off-spinner is semi-classical, has ample variations, and is schooled in the orthodox ways. But in the last two seasons, he has been building his portfolio as the record champions’s crisis man with the bat, As has been his accomplice Shams Mulani, who snared 44 wickets and accumulated 365 runs including a hundred. The 28-year-old was the joint-second highest wicket-taker, behind Vidarbha counterpart Harsh Dubey (69 at 16.98). He is a throwback, with a smooth, repeatable action, relies on loop and drop to bewitch batsmen and could man an end for hours on end.
However, he is passing through a developmental stage, and could take a couple of seasons before he could be fully ready for Test rigours. The same applies to Suthar, 23, the left-arm spinner from Shri Ganganagar in Rajasthan. The most familiar name for IPL faithfuls, amongst them, would be Sai Kishore, the Tamil Nadu–Gujarat Titans’ left-arm spinner who has three T20I appearances for India and 203 red-ball scalps for Tamil Nadu.
Most of the off-spinners, Kotian and Jammu and Kashmir’s Sahil Lothra, are bit-part cricketers. Like Saranash Jain, averaging 25 with the bat and 28 with the ball. Or Jharkhand’s Utkarsh Singh (34 with ball). The lone leg-spinner is Sikkim’s Ankur Malik, whose numbers (58 wickets at 32.84 in 19 games) are ordinary to stake his claims even for an A tour.
None of them are, by any stretch of imagination, keeping the regulars on the toes. Healthy competition, the backbone of any successful side, ceases to exist. It’s starkly grim to the times Ravi Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja began their double act. Leg-spinner Amit Mishra was woefully unfortunate to not have added more Tests than the 22 he ended his career with. Piyush Chawla could present his case. Jayant Yadav cracked a hundred and snaffled 16 wickets at 29.06 in six Tests, yet found himself in the periphery. Shahbaz Nadeen had to be satisfied with two caps.
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Pragyan Ojha was good enough to nab 113 wickets at 30.26, and at one stage of his career, as prominent as Ashwin, who had displaced the veteran Harbhajan.
Unless some of the aforementioned young spinners rapidly mature, or a new star pops up from nowhere, it could be back to the 1980s for India’s spinners. The bridge from the holy quartet to Anil Kumble, and later Harbhajan Singh, was creaky. There was nothing more than the efficiency of Ravi Shastri, the shooting stars that were Maninder Singh, Laxman Sivaramakrishnan and Narendra Hirwani.
So starting this Duleep Trophy season, the push to assemble India’s next fleet of spinners assumes a serious, or even a desperate, tone. And Kuldeep will get a red-ball outing after six months.
An eye on turn
Harsh Dubey (23): The Vidarbha spinner enjoyed a breakthrough season in his team’s title march. He has the tools, a delightful action, majestic loop and devious dip, but requires at least a couple of successful seasons before he is ready for Test cricket.
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Tanush Kotian (26): The six-feet-tall off-spinner, who was summoned as Ravi Ashwin’s replacement for the Australia tour, generates considerable bounce with his height and high release point. He relies on conventional modes of deception, but needs polishing to prosper at the highest level.
Manav Suthar (23): Like Kotian, the left-arm spinner is tall, which naturally helps him purchase bounce. He, though, loves deceiving batsmen in flight more, beside fooling them with change of pace, angles and lengths. An economy rate of 2.97 attests to his thrift too.
R Sai Kishore (28): Tall at 6’3” and over-spin reliant, he has quietly sneaked into the bracket of 200 first-class wickets (at 23.57). He has Jadeja-like traits of consistency and mastery in using crease and varying speeds. He is the most experienced of them too.
