The decision-makers who make cricketing calls within the Indian setup may or may not have seen Spin It to Win It, but they sure have hit the jackpot, using spin to extend India’s dominance in the 20-over format. Since the T20 World Cup in the USA and the Caribbean last year, India’s spinners have accounted for 105 wickets in 22 matches in the Africas (Zimbabwe and South Africa) and in Asia (at home, in Sri Lanka and now in Dubai at the Asia Cup), one of the main reasons why the team has stacked up a staggering 19-3 win-loss record in a variant that doesn’t always facilitate consistency of results.
Varun Chakaravarthy, the 34-year-old wrist-spinner from Chennai, has alone picked up nearly a third of those wickets; in 14 matches in his second coming as an international bowler, he has amassed 33 scalps, taking a wicket every over and a half while conceding just 7.25 runs per over. Others to make significant contributions in this period are the exceptionally effective but supremely underrated Axar Patel and little leg-spinner Ravi Bishnoi, who now finds himself on the sidelines. Washington Sundar has had his say whenever he has been presented with an opportunity, Riyan Parag has weighed in from time to time, and even Suryakumar Yadav and Rinku Singh have tasted success with their very occasional off-spin.
When you consider that Kuldeep Yadav, the left-arm wrist-spinner, has played only two of those 22 games, the depth of India’s spinning resources becomes even more pronounced. Kuldeep didn’t figure in a single T20I between July 2024 and last week but reiterated his value, if any reiteration was required, with two superb spells in the Asia Cup. He followed up four for seven against UAE with three for 18 against Pakistan at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium on Sunday to give him unreal figures of seven for 25 from 6.1 overs for the tournament. Player-of-the-Match awards in both outings were inevitable, largely responsible as his scalps were in India’s nine- and seven-wicket victories respectively.
It isn’t as if India is short on pace-bowling options and have therefore had to perforce invest in the spin basket. In Jasprit Bumrah, they possess the most complete all-format bowler in the world, a force of nature adept at making the most of the new ball or returning at the death to flummox batters with his toe-crushing yorkers and wonderfully disguised slower deliveries.
Arshdeep Singh, the impressive left-armer who has stacked up more T20I wickets (99) than any other Indian in a little over three years since his debut in July 2022, is warming the bench owing to consideration of team dynamics. Hardik Pandya, the all-rounder, isn’t just a stand-in; he can touch 140 kmph on a consistent basis, fancies himself as a short-ball exponent and influences outcomes with his bowling alone. Harshit Rana has proved his worth more than once while Shivam Dube has started to bowl a lot more in the last 14 months and that has clearly enhanced his confidence.
Precisely because Hardik and Dube are worth more than four overs between them, Suryakumar has been able to fall back on three specialist spinners, each of them adept at bowling at any stage of an innings. The great Muttiah Muralitharan, Test cricket’s most prolific wicket-taker, wasn’t a great fan of bowling when the field restrictions were on in either white-ball format. It didn’t stop Murali from taking 534 ODI wickets or 682 sticks in all 50-over cricket, or 179 scalps in 164 T20s (he only played 12 20-over games for Sri Lanka).
Rashid Khan, the wonderful leg-spinner who has been the face of Afghanistan cricket, boasts more 20-over wickets (670) than anyone in the history of the game, yet he isn’t at his most comfortable in the first six overs of PowerPlay. That doesn’t make them lesser bowlers; all it does is enhance the versatility and adaptability of the three Indian spinners that are starting to assume the contours of a uber-potent strike force, a heartening development from India’s perspective with the next World Cup less than six months away.
Not content with just 12 overs of high-quality spin, India is moulding other resources as insurance against a bad day for one or more of this troika. Towards that end, they are trying to get more out of Abhishek Sharma, the fearless left-handed opener who is a more than competent left-arm spinner, and Tilak Varma, the multi-faceted top-order batter whose off-spin is still a work in progress.
All other things being equal, Abhishek and Tilak will figure in India’s first-choice XI at the World Cup, which will be played in India and Sri Lanka. In February-March, pitches will naturally be expected to assist spinners, and if India can have numerous options on that front without compromising on their batting muscle, nothing like it, right?
| Photo Credit:
AFP
But for all the overs he might eke out of Abhishek and/or Tilak, the aces in Suryakumar’s pack will remain the three main men. Axar, Varun and Kuldeep are vastly different kinds of bowlers, the only commonality apart from the fact that they are spinners being that each is cricket-smart and seems instinctively to grasp what’s going on in a batter’s mind. The tallest of the lot, Axar is a conventional left-arm finger-spinner who isn’t chary of going round-armish if he thinks that’s the best tack at the time. He is naturally quicker through the air and uses accuracy as his calling card, constantly attacking the stumps and therefore almost always bringing bowled and leg before into play. But there is more to him than just that. His changes of pace, as much as angles, are subtle but mighty effective. Whenever he slows the ball down and gives it a bit of air, he has batters in a fix because they feel they have lined him up and therefore anticipate greater airspeed. Without seeming to do anything special, Axar can hold his own more often than not. You don’t pick up 74 matches in 73 T20Is while conceding no more than 7.21 runs per over by being run of the mill.
Kuldeep and Varun are both wrist-spinners, but hardly similar. Even today, the left-arm wrist-spinner is an unusual commodity in cricket; very few have had a long and successful career and even Kuldeep is finding it hard to break into the Test XI for no fault of his. On more than one pitch on the recent tour of England, he would have been a terrific weapon to have but India were forced to leave him out because of their obsession with batting depth even though Kuldeep is no mug with the bat.
In white-ball action, where the need for wickets is seen as pressing in the middle stages of an innings, he is a virtuoso who relies heavily on his stock ball that breaks into the right-hander, but he has an excellent wrong ‘un, delivered without fuss from the back of the hand that turns wickedly and late. Especially to left-hand batters, he uses the wrong ‘un to devastating effect, like Mohammad Nawaz found out on Sunday when he was trapped plumb in front, first ball.
Having played enough – 13 Tests, 113 ODIs and 42 T20Is – Kuldeep is adept at working out game situations. To him, length is non-negotiable but sometimes, he gets carried away with the weapons at his disposal. By his own admission, he is working on being more consistent in sticking to his stock ball, but when one has so many tricks in the bag, it is impossible not to dip into the bag regularly.
Varun is a late bloomer in all ways imaginable. He took to cricket late in life, and took his time finding his feet at the international level after a poor start that included a wicketless campaign at the 2021 T20 World Cup in this part of the world. Since his comeback towards the second half of last year, he has been a gathering force, impressing the selection panel and team management enough to be drafted into the 50-over squad for the Champions Trophy earlier this year. Unlike Kuldeep, he uses his googly more frequently, almost as much as he does the leg-break. He has worked on speed through the air and finds fizz on even placid surfaces, a surprise weapon that can flummox the best. A little tardy on the field and a reasonable batting rabbit, Varun’s bowling skillset has compelled the leadership group to overlook those indiscretions. To his credit, he does work hard on his fielding and perhaps a more improved version isn’t that far away.
Washington is waiting in the wings, knocking on the door to selection because like Axar, he is more than just a spinner. Like he showed again in England over the summer, his batting is a thing of beauty; he is eminently capable of switching gears and his second-innings half-century at the Oval, often overlooked, was a major influence in India’s six-run triumph, given that a majority of his runs came in the company of No. 11 Prasidh Krishna.
The effortlessness with which he cleared the ropes was further proof of his big-hitting capability; like Kuldeep, his primary ball is the one that leaves the left-hander and he will be a handy weapon to possess, instead of or alongside the famous triumvirate that will look to extend its hegemony over batters of all hue in the Super Fours and beyond at the Asia Cup.
T20 cricket was installed as the ultimate challenge for spinners but as Rashid has consistently proved, and as Kuldeep, Varun and Axar are reinforcing, there is and will always be a place for high-quality practitioners of this craft. India is fortunate to have this gun threesome. Why not use it to hunt down batters, unsuspecting or otherwise? Why not spin it to win it?