At some point during this 2017-’18 season, Zlatan Ibrahimovic will return for Manchester United. Given his debut season for the club, there is no doubt about the sort of impact he can possibly make in what should be a title challenge for Jose Mourinho’s club.
Yet, there will be a different element to this impending comeback. Unlike last season, he will not be the alpha striker. Romelu Lukaku has already taken up that position after scoring seven goals in as many appearances since his £75 million transfer from Everton this summer.
Think Zlatan, and you imagine a big, muscular striker who can bully any defence in the world. You also wonder about the flamboyance he brings to the pitch, a word that can also be associated with Ravindra Jadeja, of the moustache-twirling and sword-swinging fame. Physically, there might not be many similarities between the two, but “Sir” can be as mercurial on his day as any other athlete in the world. There is one other common thread though – on his return to the ODI side after early July, Jadeja sits on the bench.
If Jadeja isn’t Zlatan, Yuzvendra Chahal and/or Kuldeep Yadav surely aren’t Lukaku either. International cricket is vastly different from club football, particularly in that it isn’t governed by hefty price tags. Instead it is directed by investment of time, and the progression of spin in India’s limited-overs’ arena since the turn of this year is amply indicative of that point.
Captain’s confidence
It was back in January when Chahal was first picked to play for the Men in Blue (for the T20I series against England). Keeping in mind the hectic Test schedule, R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja had been rested (proper rest, not dropped or shipped away to play county cricket). The surprising bit came when Virat Kohli picked Chahal ahead of even Amit Mishra in the first T20I at Kanpur.
“The captain has always been a friend and guide for me, both on and off the field,” said Chahal after that series. “Through our time together at Royal Challengers Bangalore, we have come to understand what we want from each other – what he wants from a bowler as captain, and what I want from him as a leg-spinner.”
The other half of India’s leg-spin pairing, Kuldeep Yadav, said, “Virat bhai believes in wrist spinners.” Yadav was looking back at his short but staggering international career since his Test debut against Australia in Dharamsala.“The way he spoke to me in the West Indies where I made my ODI debut inspired me a lot. He gave me freedom with field settings, and how I wanted to bowl. If the skipper has confidence in you, it is the biggest inspiration for a player.”
For any cricket captain, his bowling attack is the most vital element on the field of play. Runs scored do not matter if you do not have the bowlers to get the requisite wickets or contain the opposition, depending upon the format or situation. Kohli has learnt this the hard way in the Champions Trophy when Ashwin-Jadeja shared five wickets between them in as many matches.
He was handicapped during the Champions Trophy when his top-ranked Test spin duo was unable to force wickets in the middle overs. It triggered a tectonic shift in his thinking. Here is a small fact for you – India have played 12 ODIs (against West Indies, Sri Lanka and Australia) since that Champions Trophy final loss to Pakistan at the Oval. A leg-spinner has featured in all of them.
Seminal moment
Years from now, if not already, we will look back at the Champions Trophy as a seminal moment when India’s approach towards spin in ODI cricket truly changed.
“It is a great advantage to have two wrist spinners in the eleven, especially when both are so different to each other,” Kohli had said before the India-Australia series began. “Both can pick wickets in the middle overs. That is the most important thing in one-day cricket. You can have as many dot balls as you want, but if you cannot pick up wickets, you can go for 10-12 runs an over,”
At this juncture, the spotlight rests on their inexperience. Chahal is well versed with white-ball cricket given his rich IPL experience. For Yadav, though, this has been a steep learning curve since Dharamsala. This is where the role played by MS Dhoni from behind the stumps becomes vital. Throughout the Lankan tour, and now more pronounced in this Australia series (thanks to Star Sports turning up the stump microphone volume), it is clearly noted how he marshals the two young spinners with usual aplomb.
While Chennai was technically reduced to a T20 affair due to rain, Dhoni’s impact is best reflected from the Kolkata ODI then. A competitive total, a slow wicket and two good spinners to play with – time and again we have seen Dhoni etch out wins for India in this fashion. Mostly, he was able to call on an off-spin/left-arm combination. Keeping to two leg spinners in tandem has been a first for him too.
Working formula
This is where the differentiation between Chahal and Yadav emanates. It goes further than mere dissimilarity in convention. An orthodox leg-break bowler, paired with a left-arm wrist spinner – this formula works well because the duo, despite their relative inexperience, are able to modulate themselves as per situation. If Glenn Maxwell attacked Yadav, Chahal was able to come on and shield his partner. In that, they are similar to how Ashwin-Jadeja operated.
The crucial variance perhaps is in chutzpah – even after getting hit, Yadav is always adamant about tossing the ball up. In both Chennai and Kolkata, he had to adjust his lengths, and only came back stronger in the respective second spells. That is the true essence of a leg spinner. Chahal, meanwhile, with his orthodoxy is able to take on the containing job as well.
It explains why Kohli hasn’t felt the need to tinker with his spin combination in India’s last three ODIs. It started in Colombo when for the first time in their 922-match history India fielded two leg spinners in the same playing eleven. Three matches later, it has been status quo since then against Australia with a 2-0 score-line to boot.
An obvious question arises here. Would it have been so if Axar Patel had not been injured ahead of the first ODI? Jadeja was called up as replacement but he only arrived in Chennai from Rajkot on the morning of the game. Even so, if the Indian team management wanted to mix things up, surely they could have left out one of the leg spinners in Kolkata and included Jadeja in the eleven. They did not.
On the path to the 2019 World Cup, there will surely be further experimentation. But make no mistake, this second ODI – with the summation of team selection and victory – was indicative of the fact that Chahal and Yadav are now easily India’s primary spin duo in limited-overs’ cricket.