IND vs ENG: Kuldeep Yadav shows why he should play more regularly in Tests

Before the first Test, Rohit Sharma spoke how tempted he is to play Kuldeep Yadav. Having chosen to play on traditional Indian pitches that were full of runs and offered slow turn in the series thus far, Kuldeep offered an interesting package. A left-arm tricky wrist-spinner, who is unique in the sense that batsmen don’t face such tribe often. But given India’s batting concerns, they were more inclined to Axar Patel in Hyderabad. And even here, ahead of the Test, there were deliberations if Washington Sundar should be included as a straight-swap for Ravindra Jadeja.

And on a day where India showed promising signs of taking control of the second Test, largely due to Jasprit Bumrah’s work of genius, Kuldeep too showed what they could have missed in his absence. In the second innings at Hyderabad, despite Bumrah conjuring magic with reverse-swing, he had found no support from the other end as Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja had both conceded over 100 runs for the first time in an innings at home. Here India were without Jadeja and Ashwin was far from his best, going wicketless for only his fifth time in a completed innings in India. In the 12 overs he sent down, the off-spinner gave away 61 runs. Axar Patel delivered four overs, removing Zak Crawley, but even then he didn’t entirely look the part on a surface that was far better for batting than it was in the first Test.

It is not as if Kuldeep was tidy with his economy. He too went for 71 runs in his 17 overs, but time and again, he kept creating chances. As England’s openers began strongly after Yashasvi Jaiswal’s maiden double century (209 off 290b, 19×4, 7×6) powered India to 396, it was Kuldeep who removed Ben Duckett. Among India’s spinners, he is the slowest of them all. On a slow track, he gave enough revs, made the ball grip and turn. And Duckett could only edge it to silly-point.

Another one for @imkuldeep18! 👏 👏@ShubmanGill times his jump to perfection to complete a fine catch 👍 👍

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— BCCI (@BCCI) February 3, 2024

But more than this, what he did after Bumrah’s game-changing spell was the one that would make India happy.Ben Foakes isn’t a perfect Bazball fit. Instead what he does at No 7 is solidity for one of the top-order batsmen to go full throttle. He had already done his part in Hyderabad with Ollie Pope and with Ben Stokes – the counter-attacking player he is – he was threatening to do it again. As Foakes kept playing for the exaggerated turn, he slowed this down a considerable bit, got the ball to dip and spin just a bit so that it beat the outside edge and hit the off-stump. And four overs later, after seeing a long-hop, Rehan Ahmed would position himself to deposit it over mid-wicket. But this one turned into a googly, and Ahmed miscued it to Shubman Gill at mid-wicket. And Bumrah would complete the rest.

On a placid pitch, having scored only 396 in the first innings, they needed collective effort from their experienced attack. But the individual brilliance of Bumrah and Kuldeep means India managed a 143 run lead, which has now swelled to 171 at stumps on Day 2. Day 3 offers plenty of hope for India. As Zak Crawley mentioned, the pitch hasn’t crumbled as much as it did in Hyderabad.

“I feel like we are still in the game massively. We back ourselves to chase a score on the fourth or fifth day. We’re taking the scoreboard out of it and playing our game the way that we want to, just as we have done the past couple of years. Hopefully that’s good enough for us at the end but if not, we’ll go again,” Crawley said.

Too 𝑲𝒖𝒍 to handle! ✌✨#INDvENG #BazBowled #IDFCFirstBankTestsSeries #JioCinemaSports pic.twitter.com/MGm5k12ETB

— JioCinema (@JioCinema) February 3, 2024

For the pitch to undergo wear and tear, which India’s spinners can make full use of, it needs time. And against a team that has chased 280-plus targets effortlessly in the Bazball era on similar sort of pitches, the hosts batting line-up is up against another character test.

In the first innings, where Jaiswal scored 209, the next best was 34. Having done all the hard work so far, India will need their talented batting unit to step up. At Hyderabad, they failed to bat England out of submission and paid the price. They can ill afford to do it again here as it would leave them with a mountain to climb with three more Tests to go.

“We were in a worse position than last week, so we still massively believe we can win this game. We’ve proven that. Hopefully they [India] believe a little bit we can win it and they have a little bit of doubt in their minds,” Crawley hoped.

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