Tom Moody, the former Australian cricketer, openly questioned India’s baffling choices for their final eleven in the second Test against England in Birmingham on Wednesday. After losing by five wickets in Leeds, India aims to level the series at Edgbaston. To do this, they made some interesting decisions, including playing three all-rounders, leaving out Jasprit Bumrah, and including five specialist batters.
Moody had trouble understanding why India would gamble with five specialist batters and continue to focus on all-rounders, a strategy that hasn’t been successful. India used the three all-rounder setup twice during their tour of Australia in the last two Tests, losing both times.
Moody wrote on X, India’s selection for this test is baffling. Not picking Bumrah is understandable, but only having 5 specialist batsmen is a gamble. The focus on all-rounders to provide depth with both bat and ball has never worked. Specialists usually offer more in a test.
For the second Test, India replaced Bumrah with Akash Deep and Shardul Thakur with Nitish Kumar Reddy. The most notable change was Washington Sundar, a spin-bowling all-rounder, replacing Sai Sudharsan, who debuted at number three at Headingley.
Indian captain Shubman Gill shared India’s plan for the next four days as they try to win and level the series. At the toss, Gill said that Bumrah’s absence was due to workload management. The inclusion of all-rounders was because of their tail-end collapses in the first game.
Gill said at the toss, No Bumrah. Just managing his workload. We had a good break, and this is an important match. Given the third Test is at Lord’s, we think that pitch will offer more, so we’ll use him there. We thought about playing Kuldeep, but after the last match, our lower order struggled, so we wanted to add batting depth.