Kuldeep Yadav is ready. Are India?

This was always going to be the big test of the new leadership team of captain Shubman Gill, coach Gautam Gambhir and vice-captain Rishabh Pant. The captain and the coach have said all the right things on this England tour. Gill has said he is prepared to play four tailenders in order to take 20 wickets as cheaply as possible. Immediately after the defeat in Leeds, Gambhir reiterated the first priority is to take 20 wickets.

The XI India put out at Headingley was along expected lines. The presence of Shardul Thakur in the squad was going to give them a better bowling option than Nitish Kumar Reddy did in Australia while still giving them someone who could hold a bat at No. 8. However, neither of the two facets materialised. Thakur scored 1 and 4, and was asked to bowl just 16 overs out of 182.4 that India sent down. In the first innings, Thakur wasn't called upon to bowl before the 40th over. He was neither a wicket-taking threat nor able to plug the run flow in the 16 overs he bowled.

The problem is, this in itself was a bold move for India if you had seen them in Australia. There was one Test in Sydney when they went in with three fast bowlers plus three allrounders in Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar, but never with five proper bowlers. On top of that, this "bold" move coincided with collapses of 7 for 41 and 6 for 31.

While the lower order has given the management every opportunity to take the wrong message from Headingley, bringing in a batting allrounder or sticking with Thakur is not going to improve India's chances of taking 20 wickets at Edgbaston. To give themselves an opportunity to win Test matches, India must now give up on lower-order runs and play four proper bowlers plus Jadeja. Instead of stacking up the batting for more runs, they need to lighten the batters' load by dismissing the opposition cheaper. They need to live in a world where 471 and 364 should be enough to win a Test despite the Bazball pitches and the new Duke's ball that goes soft sooner than it used to and swings less.

Whether the replacement bowler for Thakur is a fast bowler or a spinner should depend on the conditions, but the unusually dry English summer and the general flatness of English pitches during the Bazball era are crying out for a bit of wristspin. In another team or in another era, Kuldeep Yadav would have been a premier Test spinner, but he has found himself behind two generational spinners who are capable of scoring Test hundreds.

The good thing is that Kuldeep is still only 30. He averages 22.16 after 13 Tests, and is in his prime right now. He does more in the air than fingerspinners do, and can turn the ball both ways where fingerspinners need natural variation from worn-out surfaces to bring both edges into play. England played a staggering 39 reverse-sweeps against Jadeja in Leeds, the most played off any single bowler since ESPNcricinfo started keeping ball-by-ball records. It is not a shot so easily played off a wristspinner.

Kuldeep has done well against this batting unit recently. He took 19 wickets in four Tests when England toured India in 2024, including a Player-of-the-Match performance in the last Test in Dharamsala. Although these were Indian pitches, they didn't turn as much as they have tended to in recent times. Kuldeep holds an edge against England that can create that slightest bit of apprehension, which is anathema to Bazball. In the unlikely scenario of a green seamer being rolled out, India can go to one of the two extra seam bowlers in the squad.

In an ideal world, India will have Nos. 8 and 9 who can hold their own with the bat, but they can't keep jeopardising their chances of taking 20 wickets for these extra few runs. While not a quick scorer, Kuldeep can be a stubborn partner for a top-seven batter. He is not completely off India's minds either: he has been bowling a lot in the nets, and also on the side pitches at Leeds during every session break.

Twenty years since arguably the greatest and most competitive Ashes series of all time, there are more than a few echoes. England's batting coach now is Marcus Trescothick, who heralded a similarly quick-scoring approach in 2005. The pitches then and now are similarly good for batting. England's talismanic allrounder, Andrew Flintoff, was their leading wicket-taker 20 years ago; now his spiritual equal, Ben Stokes, looks like their best bowler. The opposition's lead fast bowler will miss two Tests, just as Glenn McGrath did back in 2005.

The leading wicket-taker then, with 40 wickets, was a wristspinner, the king of spin, Shane Warne. The time, then, might be ripe to unleash the best wristspinner in cricket since Warne and Anil Kumble.