ENG vs IND: There Was Not Enough Spin In The Pitch To Play Two Spinners - Rahul Dravid
India coach Rahul Dravid has defended his choice to play only one spinner in the fifth Test against England, claiming that there wasn’t enough spin available to warrant it.
England won the match to tie the series at 2-2, with hundreds from Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root guiding the hosts to victory with seven wickets remaining. The omission of Ravichandran Ashwin from the playing eleven was one of the match’s talking points, as many felt the visitors could have utilised an extra spinner on the track at Edgbaston.
Dravid, on the other hand, justified his decision to use only one spinner during the match. During the post-match press conference, the India coach was asked if Shardul Thakur was used correctly and if the visitors might have used an extra spinner.
It Is Not Easy To Leave Out Someone Like Ravichandran Ashwin: Rahul Dravid
Dravid refuted the suggestion that Thakur was being effectively utilised, claiming that he has performed admirably in recent games.
“No, I don’t think he (Shardul Thakur) was not properly used. I think you can always look in hindsight, you can always look at things and look at the combinations of your team. But I think Shardul has done a good job for us in these games,” said Dravid.
It’s not always easy to leave someone like Ash out in a Test match. But having said that, I think when we looked at the wicket on the first day, it had a pretty good even covering of grass and we felt there was enough in it for the fast bowlers. And I think even going into the last day, the wicket hasn’t really spun, whether it’s for Jack Leach or whether it’s for Ravindra Jadeja, who bowled through the Test match.
If anything, I think because maybe the weather played a part over the first three days and it was sort of quite probably there weren’t long phases of the sun, the wicket didn’t break up as much as probably we might have expected it to or didn’t spin as much as we expected it to,” Dravid further added.
Thakur had a forgettable game.
