India’s selection headache: Two slots, multiple contenders

Cliff Notes – India’s selection headache: Two slots, multiple contenders

• India’s first Test against West Indies may see two key positions (X and Y) filled based on pitch conditions, with a grass-covered surface favouring seamers over spinners.
• The selection dilemma involves choosing between Kuldeep Yadav and Axar Patel for the spin-bowling roles, while Prasidh Krishna and Nitish Kumar Reddy compete for the third seamer spot.

India’s selection headache: Two slots, multiple contenders

Barring last-minute injury or illness, this is almost certainly how India will line up in the first Test against West Indies: Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, B Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill, Dhruv Jurel, Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar, X, Y, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj.

Who X and Y are will mostly come down to conditions. Two days before the Test match, the Ahmedabad pitch wore a healthy cover of grass; while some of it may be shaved off by day one, this is still likely to be a surface with some help for the quicks, which would be a significant departure from the sharp turners that have by and large defined India’s home Tests over the last four years or so.

This makes India’s selection tricky, because recent history may have to go out of the window. To make things more complicated, the presence of four allrounders in their squad – of whom Jadeja, Washington and Axar Patel bowl spin and Nitish Kumar Reddy seam – allows them to choose from a mindboggling number of combinations, most of which make cricketing sense in one way or another.

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Kuldeep, Axar or neither?

The luxury of having a plethora of spin-bowling allrounders has allowed India to play three spinners almost by default in their home Tests. A surface tilted towards seam could prompt a shift to two spinners, who are likely to be Jadeja and Washington, who can both bat in the top seven and turn their stock ball in opposite directions.

This would mean India playing neither Kuldeep Yadav nor Axar.

If India do go with three spinners, Kuldeep is likely to get the nod, given the variety he adds to the attack with his left-arm wristspin – Axar and Jadeja both bowl left-arm orthodox – and the fact that he needs less help from the surface to be able to test both edges of the bat consistently. He showed this in Dharamsala last year, picking up a day-one five-for against England when India’s fingerspinners found little assistance from the surface, after their seamers had beaten the bat frequently but lucklessly with the new ball.

With India already likely to bat solidly down to No. 8, Kuldeep’s wicket-taking ability should outweigh any extra runs Axar may score.

Axar, though, cannot be discounted for two reasons. One, Ahmedabad is his hometown, and the scene of three of his five Test-match five-fors (though they came on square turners in his debut series against England in 2021). Two, he has shown even in white-ball cricket that he is becoming a more rounded bowler, delivering with more overspin and pace variation than he used to in the past.

Prasidh, Reddy, or both?

Bumrah – unless India rest him, which they aren’t likely to in seam-friendly conditions – and Siraj are almost certain to play. Depending on how much grass remains at toss time, there’s a chance that India’s attack includes a third frontline quick in Prasidh Krishna.

On Tuesday, Prasidh beat the bat consistently at the nets while getting through a solid bowling workload alongside Siraj and Reddy – Bumrah, Axar and Kuldeep, who have only just landed in India after the Asia Cup, did not bowl in the nets, though Gill, who also played that tournament, batted with the rest of the top order.

Prasidh enjoys bowling at the Narendra Modi Stadium, particularly when India and his IPL franchise Gujarat Titans play on its red-soil pitches, which provide plenty of bounce. The pitch for the Test match is a red-soil strip. While Prasidh is yet to play a home Test, and has only played one first-class match at Motera, his white-ball record at the venue makes him a tempting option.

He has nine wickets in three ODIs here – all against West Indies, for what it’s worth – at an average of 7.55, and more T20 wickets here (20 at an economy of 7.89) than anywhere else.

The other seam option is the Reddy. The flexibility that Jadeja and Washington offer allows India to use Reddy in two ways. As X, his role would lean more towards batting, with either Prasidh or a third spinner taking the Y slot. As Y, he would be expected to shoulder the third seamer’s workload, with India picking a specialist batter in Devdutt Padikkal – or a fourth allrounder in Axar, which you cannot rule out in a team coached by Gautam Gambhir – as X.