India has clinched the test series against Bangladesh after a hard-fought 3-wicket victory in the 2nd test match at Mirpur. India had earlier won the 1st test match played at Chattogram by 187 runs. With this win, India has done itself a big favor. India now sits pretty at the 2nd position in the WTC 2021-23 points table.
Although India managed to sneak a victory from the jaws of defeat, through a 2nd-highest 8th-wicket partnership of 71 runs, this series has brought some glaring questions to the fore. Here are some of the important questions that the team management must answer before the start of the Australia test.
Why was Kuldeep Dropped?
Kuldeep Yadav, the man of the match from the 1st test in Chattogram, was surprisingly left out of the playing XI in this match. It raised many eyebrows as he would have been perfect for this pitch. Instead, India chose to go ahead with Jaydev Unadkat who was playing a test match after 12 long years. Bangladesh played 3 spinners and they almost snatched a momentous victory. It is important now for the team management to answer the question – Why Kuldeep Yadav was left out of the squad?
KL Rahul is not a Captaincy Material
KL Rahul’s captaincy has been criticized a lot in the past and it seems these criticisms will not leave his back for some time in the future. Rahul goes clueless whenever the opponent exerts pressure on his team. This has been a visible feature in his captaincy during IPL as well. In both test matches, there were crucial moments when Rahul’s decisions seemed odd that helped the opponents break out of jail. Dropping Kuldeep Yadav was another blunder he made that almost led to India’s defeat in the second test.
Indian Players’ Inability to Play Spin Comfortably
This issue has become a common one for not only Indian players but all the subcontinent players. The Asian batters are becoming more and more susceptible to quality spin. In the second test match, Indian batters like Shubman Gill, KL Rahul, Chteswar Pujara and Virat Kohli all fell to spin in both innings. The reason behind this glaring chink in the armory of Indian batters is they do not play in slow and turning pitches often. Players like Kohli and Rahul do not play domestic cricket. While players like Gill and Pujara regularly feature in domestic cricket, the pitches here are either flat or seamer-friendly. These kinds of pitches arrived in the Indian domestic circuit after disastrous England tours in 2011 and 2014. Seamer-friendly or batter-friendly pitches are now visible in IPL too.
The Playing XI is not Perfect
One of the biggest mistakes that the team management is currently overlooking is they are consistently not fielding the correct playing XI in all the formats. Sometimes, injuries to players force their hands but other times, it just seems senseless. Persisting with Shikhar Dhawan in the ODI format by keeping Gill out, opting to open test innings with KL Rahul even though he seems completely out of sorts, dropping impact players are some of the things that the Indian team management has resorted to in the past that has led to the team’s downfall.
Conclusion
These blunders were visible to every ICT fan during the recently concluded India vs Bangladesh series. However, in the past, we have seen this pattern repeat that seemed meaningless. We all agreed that Dravid is the perfect man to hold the reigns of the team after Ravi Shashtri’s exit. Dravid had an exceptional record while working with the U19 boys. But, something is off while he is coaching the senior men’s team. Hopefully, the stakeholders will sit and discuss these blunders and come out with a solution before the big Border-Gavaskar series commences next year.
