India wicketkeeper batter Dinesh Karthik believes that Yuzvendra Chahal has been lucky that the selectors persisted with him despite poor numbers in the last year or so.
Last week the selectors announced the 18-member squads for the T20I and ODI series against West Indies. Chahal has been selected for both formats despite poor numbers in the ODI series against South Africa. In the 3-match ODI series, Chahal picked just two wickets with an economy of around 5.
Yuzvendra Chahal picked just two wickets in the ODI series against South Africa
And this series wasn’t one-off as his numbers have been consistently poor for the past couple of years. Since Jan 2020, Chahal picked 12 wickets in 14 T20Is with an economy of 8.74 while in 9 ODIs he picked 14 wickets with an economy of 5.84.
Speaking to Cricbuzz, Dinesh Karthik said that Chahal has been persisted because of a lack of options.
Another leg-spinner Rahul Chahar, who was picked for the T20 World Cup ahead of Chahal, has been out of the radar due to injury while Ravi Bishnoi got his maiden India call for the series against West Indies so it will be interesting to see who gets a chance in the XI.
“At this point of time, outside of Chahal, if you got to pick a wrist-spinner, then there is Rahul Chahar and Ravi Bishnoi. And looking at the way things have panned out, I do feel Bishnoi is ahead at the moment right now.
“But we need to see how badly is Chahal bowling. His stats say that he hasn’t had the best of years. But in many ways he has been lucky because there is nobody pushing him for a place in the squad,” said Karthik.
Karthik also opined that the lack of domestic cricket is the reason why enough wrist spinners are not coming through the ranks. Notable that Ranji Trophy was cancelled in the last season.
“So you have to understand that these things happen due to lack of domestic cricket. We are only looking at IPL. There is nothing else to look at in terms of new bowlers, fast bowlers are there in plenty, but when it comes to wrist spinners, there are hardly any,” he added.
“And that will remain an issue due to lack of domestic cricket, because you need people with a lot of wickets, especially wrist spinners, and they haven’t played the longer format. They play only 4-5 games of Vijay Hazare and that’s all you get as a sample to choose from.
“That is why in the last two years you haven’t seen anybody come out from the ranks. And the main reason is of course Covid which has created a havoc for many domestic cricketers. While a lot of the international cricketers want a break, the domestic cricketers want a game right now,” he stated.