India’s assistant coach reveals why Kuldeep Yadav is not the easiest to pick

Team India assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate has heaped praise on Indian spinner Kuldeep Yadav, who scalped an exceptional five-wicket haul in the first innings of the ongoing second and final Test against the West Indies on Day 3 in Delhi on Sunday, October 12.

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Speaking in the post-day press conference, Ryan asserted that Kuldeep is definitely not the easiest to pick, adding that he has an element of danger compared to the finger spinners and bowls in the right areas to spin it both ways.

“The difference with Kuldeep is that he’s not the easiest to pick. He has an element of danger compared to the finger spinners. But yeah, Kuldeep put the ball in the right area and spun it both ways. But I certainly think the fact that a lot of these guys wouldn’t have faced a lot of him, that mystery element makes him a little bit more effective than the other two,” ten Doeschate said in the post-day media conference. 

It’s important to note that despite being an attacking spinner, Kuldeep could play only 15 Tests since his debut in Dharamshala in 2017. Interestingly, four of those games came outside India. In those four, two of them came inside the sub-continent. While he went wicketless in his first Test outside the sub-continent at Lord’s in 2018, he picked up a fifer in his next game in Sydney.

Interestingly, Kuldeep didn’t get a chance in any of the five Tests in the recently concluded Anderson Tendulkar Trophy in England, which surprised many in the Indian cricketing fraternity. Speaking on the same, Ryan shared his views.

“It’s very difficult and I just cast my mind back to all the discussions around teams [in England]. I think we got the wickets pretty spot on in England; it was a very high-scoring Test series, so we were always trying to balance playing the batting all-rounder with playing three guys at the end who don’t really bat,” he observed. 

“But I guess he’s shown [his class] even on an unresponsive wickets; it does make you wonder what happens if we played him at Manchester or at Headingley, but those are calls you have to make in real time and we’re always trying to figure out what’s best, and then we go with the call and the players have been brilliant at buying into it,” he concluded.

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