Are India mulling Kuldeep vs allrounder?

Kuldeep Yadav has won three Player-of-the-Match awards in Test cricket: against Bangladesh in Chattogram in 2022, against England in Dharamsala last year, and in India's most recent Test match, against West Indies in Delhi last month.

On the first two occasions, India left Kuldeep out of their XIs in their very next Test. On both occasions - Mirpur, 2022 and Chennai, 2024 - he went out because India left out a spinner to play an extra seamer.

There's a chance now that Kuldeep's wretched luck with Player-of-the-Match awards could continue into Friday, with India captain Shubman Gill suggesting on the eve of the first Test against South Africa that the team management was debating the choice between an extra allrounder and an extra spinner.

The context of Gill's statement was a question about whether India were thinking of picking a third seamer rather than a third spinner given Eden Gardens' recent history of help for fast bowling.

This was Gill's reply: "This time of the year, there's always a conflict whether you would want to go for that extra allrounder or you want to go for an extra spinner, but once we come tomorrow, see how the wicket looks in the morning, we are going to take a decision [on] what kind of combination would give us the best chance to be able to win this Test match."

India's bowling combination in their last Test match in Delhi was two seamers in Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj and three spinners in Kuldeep, Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar, of whom the last two are allrounders.

There are two possible interpretations of Gill's statement.

One is that India are thinking of picking a third seamer, in which case Akash Deep would come into their attack. That, then, would mean leaving out either Washington or Kuldeep.

Given that Gill referred to the time of the year, this seems the likely quandary for India. The weather in Kolkata through the Test match is set to be mild, with daytime temperatures in the mid-to-early 20s (Celsius). With the ground staff preparing a pitch that looks like it will start out flat and true, there is a chance that the sun may not beat down hard enough over the first two or three days to accelerate surface wear and tear. Given the likelihood of swing, both conventional and reverse, playing a role through the Test match, India may feel a third seamer could be a likelier wicket-taking option than a third spinner.

This would leave them with the classic debate: attacking wristspinner with the tools to take wickets even on flat pitches (Kuldeep) vs offspinning allrounder who is good enough to play either as a pure batter or bowler in Indian conditions, but who is unlikely to run through teams on unhelpful surfaces (Washington).

On the evidence of the Delhi Test, where India spent 200 straight overs on the field after making West Indies follow on, India would be heavily inclined to pick Kuldeep. On a slow, low Delhi pitch where edges seldom carried to close catchers, Kuldeep was by far India's most incisive spinner, picking up 8 for 186 in 55.5 overs. Between them, Jadeja and Washington bowled 88 overs and took 5 for 269.

But India value batting depth, and have emphasised it to an unusual degree during Gautam Gambhir's tenure as head coach. Kuldeep can hold up an end as a lower-order batter, as he has shown previously in Test cricket, and showed last week while scoring 20 off 88 balls and 16 off 54 in India A's second unofficial Test against South Africa A in Bengaluru. But Washington is a proper batter with a century, five fifties, and an average of 44.76 in Tests. There is no competition between the two as batters.

And even if he may lack Kuldeep's wicket-taking genius, Washington is a genuine bowler in home conditions, and can bowl long spells and test batters' defence even on flatter pitches, particularly through his ability to generate unusual amounts of drift.

It isn't a straightforward choice at all, if the choice is between Kuldeep and Washington, with the player picked batting at No. 8.

There is, though, another possible interpretation of Gill's words, that India stick to a two-seamer, three-spinner combination, with Kuldeep and Axar Patel - who would be the extra, third allrounder - fighting for one slot.

At Thursday's press conference, Gill was asked if Kuldeep vs Axar was the conflict he had referred to.

"I think let's leave that one for tomorrow," Gill said, after a pause. "You can see it at the toss."

In most circumstances, three spin-bowling allrounders would seem like overkill, and an exceedingly defensive move, especially if it came at the cost of the point of difference Kuldeep brings to India's attack. With Rishabh Pant returning to their XI and displacing Nitish Kumar Reddy, their batting definitely doesn't need the extra security of Axar batting at No. 9.

But there are signs that India could be a little worried about Kuldeep's form. They released him midway through the white-ball tour of Australia so he could get into red-ball rhythm by playing an unofficial Test for India A. He went on to endure a difficult match with the ball: just one wicket across two innings in South Africa A's five-wicket win while going at a run a ball in the first innings and at close to five an over in the second.

Anyone can have a bad match, of course, and Mohammed Siraj and Akash Deep, who also played that match, also bowled expensive spells, on a pitch at the Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru that began as a green seamer before flattening out entirely.

Siraj and Akash Deep, however, aren't in the position Kuldeep has occupied right through his career. Whether it was Jadeja and R Ashwin in his early years or Jadeja, Washington and Axar now, he has always been the wristspinner who isn't much of a batter competing with quality fingerspinning allrounders. Any fluctuation in Kuldeep's form is a chance for one of the others to remind the team management of their best attributes.

And Kuldeep isn't competing with bits-and-pieces allrounders. Even Axar, who hasn't played a Test match since February 2024, is a genuine bowler in Indian conditions. When he lost his place during the series against England last year, he had begun looking a little one-dimensional, threatening only one edge of the bat, with teams seeming to have worked out the threat of his wide release and undercut. But he has shown signs of late, albeit in white-ball cricket, of having worked hard on adding more layers to his craft, dangling up a noticeably higher proportion of overspin-heavy balls in the 81-84kph range, much slower than his usual pace.

Because there's so much competition, none of India's spinners are standing still and resting on their skillsets. They simply cannot afford to.

"I consider myself very fortunate to have the allrounders we have," Gill said. "Whether it's Axar Patel or Washington or Jaddu bhai, whether it's their bowling record or their batting record, it's really good, especially in India. As a captain, it's very difficult to decide whom to pick and whom to leave out, because they are as good batsmen as they are bowlers, they are proper allrounders [...] But it's a better problem to have too many options rather than too few options."

India's problem of plenty has once again left them mulling over a splitting headache of a selection. Whether it's two spinners or three, and whether it's two allrounders or three, someone who would walk into most other Test teams will be sitting out.