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Follow UsIs Washington Sundar a frontline spinner who can contribute with handy runs down the order, or is he a batting all-rounder that can double up as a second spinner?
It’s a question for which India will need to figure out an answer, and do so quickly, if they are to compete away in England in six months’ time.
Sundar started the 2024/25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy as a specialist spinner in Perth, playing as the lone tweaker ahead of both Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja. He was then left out of the next two Tests but then came back for the Melbourne and Sydney games…. only this time as a specialist lower-order batter who bowled a few overs.
Well, the Indian management wants the world to believe that they picked Sundar across the last two Tests to bolster the bowling, but they did not.
The 25-year-old bowled 20 overs across four innings at MCG and SCG, which was roughly 7% of the team’s overs. In Melbourne, he was not called to action until the 53rd over of Australia’s innings and in Sydney, he bowled a grand total of one over - the very last over of the Test, with Australia needing 11 runs to seal the game.
And so, across the last two games of the series, he was effectively a glorified specialist lower-order batter, having batted thrice at No.8 and once at No.9.
Sundar not bowling in Sydney was undoubtedly down to the unprecedented seam-friendly wicket that was on offer, but it goes without saying that, outside India, the management currently have little idea about the role they want Sundar to play.
How Sundar was used across the last two Tests of the series pretty much proves this.
If the management felt that Sundar was a proper frontline spin-bowling option like they claimed him to be, he would have bowled far more overs, certainly at the MCG, where the team sent down a total of 206 overs across two innings. Contrarily, if they believed he was a capable ‘batting’ all-rounder, the left-hander would have batted ahead of at least one of Nitish Kumar Reddy or Jadeja, if not both.
Instead, the way they utilised Sundar made it evident that they slotted him in as a ‘safety net’ down the order for rescue acts like the one in the first innings in Melbourne. Such a selection would work in a very specific scenario, but what the Sundar pick ultimately ended up doing was reducing India to 10 men at the MCG and nine men at SCG once Jasprit Bumrah went off the field.
It goes without saying that, at both MCG and SCG, India would have been served better had they picked a fourth seamer or a specialist batter - like Dhruv Jurel - in place of Sundar. And this is not even hindsight.
India’s next assignment is a five-Test series in England and it is almost a certainty that there will not be a single venue that will warrant the side even consider the possibility of playing two spinners.
This brings us to the point about Sundar: India effectively have six months to figure out the 25-year-old’s role outside Asia.
If the management feel he is good enough to be a lone spinner in a SENA country who can double-up as a rock down the order, he has to play over Jadeja. And if they feel Sundar is good enough to walk into the XI on the basis of his batting alone, he has to play in the top six as a proper specialist batter.
Shoehorning Sundar in at No.8 as insurance for the top-order will only handicap the side - like we saw at the SCG.
