India’s five spinners have made it into the final 15-member squad for the Champions Trophy, which is around the corner from February 19. Rohit Sharma’s team will find itself busy through Dubai International Cricket Stadium but quite oftentimes it doesn’t get the spinners going, however they touted Axar Patel, Varun Chakravarthy, Kuldeep Yadav, Washington Sundar, and Ravindra Jadeja in a tournament featuring Bangladesh, Pakistan and New Zealand in the league stage.
Ravichandran Ashwin, legendary spinner, said in connection with India’s selection that perhaps they are carrying too many spinners. He felt that opener Yashasvi Jaiswal should not have been left out and said three or max four would be the best but five probably too many, especially in Dubai.
“I don’t understand taking so many spinners to Dubai for five spinners and not to Yashasvi Jaiswal?” Yes, I get that we take three or four spinners for a tour, but five spinners for Dubai? Not really, one feels that there is one, maybe two too many spinners in the squad,” Ashwin described on his YouTube channel.
Well, do you think the ball will turn in Dubai? Recently in the ILT20, we saw that the ball hardly turned in Dubai and teams could chase down 180 comfortably. I’m a little iffy about the team composition,” he added.
Speaking of the team composition, Ashwin believes that Kuldeep and Varun can form a devastating spin combination but he doesn’t think they will be dropping either Jadeja or Axar after their excellent performance in the five-match series against England. So if the Men in Blue would have four spinners, one of the pacers will be dropped from the playing XI and, by the way, added that Hardik Pandya would be the second seamer. But the chances of that look extremely bleak at the moment.
