India's struggle against spin has been a pressing problem, of late.
India’s recent 3-0 whitewash at the hands of New Zealand at home served as a major reality check for the Men in Blue, especially with the highly-anticipated Border Gavaskar Trophy lined up next.
Apart from the horror loss, one glaring problem that became extremely obvious was India’s struggle against spinners. Star players like Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma amongst others have all struggled against spin in the recent series defeat.
Echoing on the same lines, Australian legend Ricky Ponting opined that the tendency of Indian batters to play an aggressive style due to the IPL may have been a detrimental factor.
Ricky Ponting said to ICC review, “Maybe because they’re playing on different wickets in India that are probably for the fast bowlers a bit more, maybe because there are more high-quality fast bowlers in India now that they’re not playing as much spin bowling as they did. Maybe it’s the IPL or how much IPL cricket they’re playing that the younger players are learning the game that way rather than the way that players did 15 or 20 years ago”.
During the decisive second Test against the Kiwis in Pune, Mitchell Santner single-handedly dismantled the Indian batting lineup, taking 13 wickets across both innings.
In the final game in Mumbai, another left-arm spinner, Ajaz Patel took 11 scalps as India suffered their first-ever whitewash at home (3 or more Tests).
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India’s struggles with spin resurfaced during their ODI series loss in Sri Lanka earlier this year in August as well. In the three games held in Colombo, India lost a staggering 27 out of 30 wickets to spinners. While India has had ongoing challenges against spin in Test cricket, this vulnerability has increasingly affected their performance in white-ball formats too.
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