Whatever cricket I played till date, Ravi Shastri backed me a lot: Kuldeep Yadav

Indian cricket team management has long been experimenting with the perfect team combination more often than not in a bid to get the best results. However, the team management has been reluctant to play the successful wrist-spin combo ‘Kul-Cha’ together. It has been a long time since the productive wrist spin duo had played together in the same match.

Ever since the round-robin fixture of the summer’s showpiece event against England last year at Edgbaston, the Indian team management made sure not to play both of them in the same team. As far as ODI format is concerned, Kuldeep Yadav has been preferred over Yuzvendra Chahal while the latter has been preferred over Kuldeep Yadav in the shortest format of the game.

When played together, the duo managed to pick up 65 wickets in 34 matches at a spectacular average of 22.73. Sadly, one such match-winning wrist-spin combination has not been followed after just one bad game. However, playing both Kuldeep and Chahal together weakens the batting order to some extent.

When there is someone like Ravindra Jadeja or Hardik Pandya who possesses three-dimensional abilities, it does not allow Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal to play as a pair in the limited-overs cricket.

Kuldeep Yadav eyes strong return to cement place in T20 World Cup squad

The wrist-spinner Kuldeep Yadav is looking forward to cementing his spot in India’s T20 World Cup team with a sensational IPL season. “I don’t feel anything went wrong. It depends on the combination. In New Zealand the wickets were quite different, you might have seen that there were no spin tracks in Tests. Moreover, it was not a long Test series as well,” Kuldeep Yadav said as quoted by Pune Mirror.

Kuldeep highlighted that Ravi Shastri backed him through and through whenever he played for the team. “(Coach) Ravi bhai backs me a lot. He is open to everything. Whatever cricket I played till date, he backed me a lot. It was a team decision keeping in mind the conditions,” Kuldeep added in a statement.

Kuldeep Yadav’s last T20 match appearance came against Sri Lanka in January this year. He was given a chance to play in just one of the three ODIs in the New Zealand series which India suffered a 0-3 whitewash at the hands of New Zealand. The spinner is eyeing the cash-rich Indian Premier League that starts on March 29, in order to make a strong statement and return to the India setup.