‘Don’t really regret playing..’- KL Rahul gives straightforward reason over not playing Kuldeep Yadav for the 2nd Test against Bangladesh

Bangladesh were on course to create history on Sunday as they were just three wickets short of winning their first-ever Test match against India in the history of the game.

However, Shreyas Iyer and Ravichandran Ashwin put on a match-winning 71-run stand for the seventh wicket to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and help India take the series 2-0. With that win, their hope of reaching the World Test Championship final stays alive as well.

The spinners got a lot of assistance in the second Test match at Shere Bangla National Stadium. Surprisingly, Kuldeep Yadav, who was the standout bowler for India in the first Test match, was dropped for the second Test. Team India’s decision to add an extra pacer over the Chinaman invited a lot of criticism from the fans and cricket pundits alike.

Following the win against Bangladesh, India’s stand-in skipper, KL Rahul explained the reason behind dropping Kuldeep Yadav for the Test match. The skipper felt that there would be assistance for both pacers and the spinners and don’t really regret playing an extra pacer instead of a spinner.

“It was a tough call, knowing and understanding that he had just won the Test for us,” Rahul said.

“But seeing the pitch before the game and on the first day, we felt that there will be assistance for both fast bowlers and spinners. We wanted to play the best team we can. And that’s the call we made. I don’t regret that, and that was the right decision. If you see the 20 wickets we took, a lot of wickets [ten] even the fast bowlers took. They had a lot of assistance and there was a lot of inconsistent bounce,” added KL Rahul

“All these decisions we took keeping in mind the experience of playing here in the ODIs. We saw that there was assistance for both spin and fast bowlers. Understanding that a Test match goes on for four or five days, you need to have both,” explained Rahul.

India will next be playing a white-ball home series against Sri Lanka, starting 3rd January 2022.