5 reasons why India should not prepare rank turners against New Zealand
We are just over two weeks away from the start of a long home season with India scheduled to play as many as 13 Test matches against New Zealand, England, Bangladesh and Australia respectively.
Before such a scenario on more occasions than not, the pitches come under the scanner, with too much assistance for spinners making the contests one-sided affair.
We look at five reasons why India should not prepare rank turners in the series against New Zealand:
1.Presence of quality spinners in NZ
In the past, Indian teams have taken the advantage of the fact that foreign batsmen have a weakness to facing quality spin bowling. But the scenario has changed a bit in the past five years, with overseas sides also bringing along with them some fine yet underrated spinners, who are equally capable of causing damage.
The best example for that was England’s 2012-13 tour to India, where the likes of Graeme Swann, Monty Panesar proved to be more effective than the Indian foursome of R Ashwin, Pragyan Ojha, Harbhajan Singh and Ravindra Jadeja.
Four years on, Indi would be once again tempted to prepare square turners for the Kiwis, but will do well to not do that, thanks to the presence of Ish Sodhi, Mitchell Santner and Mark Craig in the visitor’s arsenal.
If they need any proof for the kind of damage that they can do, they just need to go back to the World T20 game at Nagpur, where they bundled out India for a paltry total to win the match for their side.