Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal are new-age Indian spinners. However, in recent times Kuldeep Yadav has fallen badly out of favour from the Indian selectors which has seen him stay away from all three squads since the last two years, His last real involvement with the Indian team was back in the 2019 ICC World Cup. Between September of 2017 and July of 2019, Kuldeep and Chahal had featured together in 34 ODIs out of the 53 played by India. Of those, India won 24 games.

Meanwhile, talking to Sports Tak, Yuzvendra Chahal opened up on the reason behind Kuldeep Yadav’s continuous omission across all formats. The leg-spinner, who last played with Kuldeep in the 2019 World Cup match against England, has revealed that the reason he and Kuldeep no longer feature together in India’s Playing XI is because of what happened with Hardik Pandya and his injury.

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Unfortunately Kuldeep Is a Spinner, Team Needed Medium Pacer After Hardik’s Injury: Yuzvendra Chahal

“When Kuldeep Yadav and I used to play, Hardik Pandya was also there and he would bowl. In 2018 Hardik Pandya got injured and Ravindra Jadeja made a comeback (in white-ball cricket) as an all-rounder, the one who could also bat at number 7. Unfortunately, he is a spinner, we could have played together if he was a medium pacer. It was the demand of the team,” Chahal told Sports Tak in an interview.

In the process, Chahal highlighted skipper Virat Kohli’s willingness to play players who can contribute with both bat and ball. While Kuldeep is an excellent spinner, he is not a good batsman which is why he has been sitting on the sidelines, Despite being not picked in the playing XI, Kuldeep was selected in all the Indian squads that India picked after the 2019 World Cup.

The performances of Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav have dipped over the last year. While Kuldeep has hardly played games for India, Chahal has not featured in ODIs since November. The leg-spinner did play in the three T20Is for India against England at home, but returned figures of 1/44, 1/34 and 1/41.

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