‘He would have got a wake-up call’: Dasgupta says India spinner looked ‘a little off the boil’ in T20I series

Team India have a problem of plenty during the ODI series against England. The Indian cricket team is loaded with options in the top-order, middle-order, spin department, and fast-bowling and the team management will have to make some tough calls while selecting players. The likes of Shikhar Dhawan and KL Rahul will fight it out for a spot as the opener while Suryakumar Yadav and Shreyas Iyer are looking to cement their place in the side. With Bumrah and Shami out,

Team India will rely on Bhuvneshwar Kumar to lead the pace battery along with Shardul Thakur, T Natarajan, Mohammed Siraj, and Prasidh Krishna. Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav have generally been the first-choice spinners for India in the limited-overs set-up but all-rounder Washington Sundar has started making inroads into the team.

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Chahal played the first three T20Is against England but he was dropped in favour of Rahul Chahar in the remaining matches. Chahal has proven to be expensive in the shortest format with an economy rate of around 8 while not picking up more than one wicket in his last 13 T20Is.

Former India wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta also feels Chahal looked ‘a little off the boil’ in the T2OI series and Chahar’s inclusion would have been a wake-up call for him.

"He (Chahal) has looked a little off the boil this series. With Rahul Chahar coming in and performing, there are a lot of right-arm wrist-spinners, let alone wrist-spinners. I am sure he would have got a wake-up call there. I am sure he will up his game as well because he knows there is a fair amount of competition," Dasgupta told Sports Today.

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"I am glad that Kuldeep Yadav is there as well. You would ideally want Kuldeep to play a few games here. He has been a part of the white-ball teams but basically been a passenger over the last 2 years."

Even though his performances in T20Is have dipped, Chahal is a proven performer in ODIs. The leg-spinner has picked 92 wickets in 54 matches for India in the 50-over format at an average of 27.29.