If you don't perform, three-four players are ready to take your place, asserts Yuzvendra Chahal
Yuzvendra Chahal feels that there is a lot of healthy competition in the spin department stating that there are three-four players ready to grab the opportunity if one doesn't perform. Chahal has faced many ups and downs after being left out of the T20 squad against South Africa and West Indies.
Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav have bamboozled batsmen with their wrist spin and were one of Kohli's most go-to weapons in the Indian ODI team especially in the build-up to the ODI World Cup. But due to reasons like team combination and Chahal and Kuldeep's inability to bat, their partnership has been broken and they had been left out of the T20I series against South Africa and West Indies post the World Cup. Chahal however, got his chance in the Bangladesh T20I series and showed just how crucial he is for the team, picking wickets at regular intervals and almost cementing his place in the Indian T20 outfit.
India's premier spinners Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja were dropped from the Indian white-ball side after the 2017 Champions Trophy and Chahal believes that similar thing has happened to him and Kuldeep and he accepted it with grace.
“Somethings are not in your hands and I was not thinking about that. It was a decision that the selectors made. It is something similar to when they picked me and Kuldeep, back then they rested Ashwin and Jadeja. That’s how things work,” Chahal told Cricket Next.
“I was part of my stateside in the Vijay Hazare Trophy in Baroda. So yeah the idea is to keep playing as much as you can. Be it for India or my stateside. It is important to keep playing."
IPL has helped increase India's bench strength in the T20 format with the likes of Krunal Pandya and Rahul Chahar having grabbed the limelight. Washington Sundar has proved to be an excellent bowler in the powerplay and Chahal feels that all this will only improve the standard of bowling by Indian spinners.
“It is a good thing to have a good bench strength. You need to work hard because if you’re not performing well there are three-four guys ready, waiting behind you,” he asserted.
Virat Kohli, in one of his press conferences, had mentioned building a team for the T20 World Cup that bats deep, probably till number 10. This might be one of the reasons why Kuldeep and Chahal were dropped from the T20 squad and Chahal says that he is concentrating on his batting but his bowling remains his primary skill.
“Sometimes when I get time, I do try and bat. But in the T20 format, I mostly concentrate on bowling. Obviously it helps if you can have a couple of big shots, especially if the team requires six runs off one ball,” Chahal concluded.
