There was a time when India’s famous spin quartet had a big impact on the game. But that was in the Test cricket of the 1960s and 70s when Bishan Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna, Bhagwath Chandrasekhar and Srinivas Venkataraghavan bamboozled batters with their craft.
In modern-day cricket, it is difficult to play three spinners together. Four? Unthinkable. But India have done exactly that in this Champions Trophy. It is difficult to remember when in the recent past India last employed four specialist spinners together, that too in white-ball cricket. After all, the emergence of quality pacers like Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami and Jasprit Bumrah had reduced the dependence on spinners.
On Sunday, in the Champions Trophy final against New Zealand in Dubai, the quartet of Varun Chakravarthy, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja bowled 30 overs uninterrupted from the 11th to the 40th over. That doesn’t happen every day. In the 2018 Asia Cup final against Bangladesh, India bowled more than 30 overs of spin with Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep, Jadeja and part-timer Kedar Jadhav. Point to note — three specialist spinners, not four.
Jadeja and Axar will also qualify as all-rounders, but they are primarily bowlers who can also bat and not the other way around.
“I don’t quite remember four spinners in the XI during our playing days too,” former left-arm spinner Maninder Singh told The Telegraph.
“But if you talk of these four spinners in the current side, they’ll do well even if there’s just a bit of purchase from the wicket. They go in with a different set of variations. So, even if the pitch is a wee bit slow, they’re still effective. It becomes easier for the captain if he has the luxury of four spinners in the XI,” Maninder, who played 35 Tests and 59 ODIs, said.
The four Indian spinners bowled a total of 38 overs on Sunday and shared five wickets between them to restrict the Black Caps. Of the total 154 dot balls bowled by the Indians on Sunday, 125 came from the spinners.
There was a lot of talk about India naming five spinners, including Washington Sundar, in their Champions Trophy squad. It was seen as an unnecessary move. But fact is, it has been a masterstroke.