Omission from World Cups but a bilateral regular: The curious case of Yuzvendra Chahal | Cricket News

When India’s ODI squad for the three-match series against South Africa was announced on Thursday, there was a sense of certainty that one man would return to the squad: Yuzvendra Chahal.A similar sense of inevitability would spring up when the team for the World Cup was being announced. Back then, it felt almost a given that Chahal would miss out. And he did.
This sharp contrast in fortunes sums up the leggie’s career: a genuine wicket-taker, the 33-year-old has been constantly snubbed for big-ticket events like the World Cups but has been a regular in bilateral series.

Chahal missed the Asia Cup, apart from the World Cup, this year. He was also left out of the 2021 T20 World Cup in UAE. And in the 2022 World Cup, though he was part of the squad, the team management opted to go with the two finger spinners – Ravi Ashwin and Axar Patel – in the playing 11 throughout the campaign.
In 72 ODIs, Chahal has picked up 121 wickets at an average of 27.13 and an economy of 5.27. In T20Is, he is the highest wicket-taker for India with 96 wickets. He is regarded highly many former and current players. But despite his variations and accuracy, the tendency to leak boundaries and weakness with the bat are seen as some of the key reasons why he gets overlooked for major tournaments, experts suggested.
Old-school and orthodox
“Chahal is quite old school and orthodox in terms of his leg-spin,” former India left-arm spinner Murali Kartik told The Indian Express. “He is not a Ravi Bishnoi or Rashid Khan who are not big spinners of the ball. He has the leg-spin, googly and the top spinner. In addition, when he is bowling well and gets enough revolutions on the ball, he gets a lot of drift or swirl towards the right-hander or away from the left-hander. All these things are tricks up his sleeve.”
Yuzvendra Chahal in action. (FILE)
Along with all the variations Chahal can vary his pace without losing the accuracy, he added. “The control in trajectory or flight is something which he has,” said Kartik.
Chahal’s wicket of Usman Khawaja at the MCG in 2019 in an ODI is a case in point. Khawaja tried to work him for a single on the leg side but got beat the trajectory and pace, and caught the leading edge. The ball looped straight back to the leg-spinner for a return catch.
He picked up six wickets in that spell – his best ODI figures – on a pitch that wasn’t a rank turner and nor were the batters looking to be hyper-aggressive against him. Yet, he bamboozled the batters with his skill while they were looking to rotate the strike or defend.

But one spell in particular has turned into a blueprint for the batsmen on how to tackle Chahal. It came in 2019, when India played England in the World Cup – a rare big match that Chahal featured in.
Leaking boundaries more often
The English batters on the day went after Kuldeep Yadav and Chahal post which the ‘Kul-Cha’ partnership was separated. Chahal, the ‘orthodox’ spinner, gave away 88 runs in 10 overs and became the bowler with the most expensive spell for India in the World Cups. Chahal bowled 28 dot balls out of 60 but gave away seven boundaries and six sixes.
While he is still as accurate today as he was before 2019, what changed is the intent of the batters, who have been more proactive against him. According to stats from cricket-21.com till 2019, Chahal conceded a boundary per every 14.4 balls but post that has fallen to 10.4 balls.
When things have not been going his way, Chahal’s spells have become way more expensive than usual and have been effectively costing the team games. Chahal’s five most expensive spells in ODIs have all come after 2019.
“Previously, average scores in ODI were 250, and now it goes to 350 and 450 sometimes. Even in T20 cricket 180-200 is becoming normal these days. Where do you draw the line on how to stop the runs? Worrying about the runs is not the criterion at all,” argues former Indian leg-spinner Vaman Kumar.

This might be true in bilateral cricket where there is a chance to come back even after a game loss but in a big ICC tournament, when the stakes are high, it begs the question: How willing are the captains to take that risk?
In 2021, the team management went with Varun, who is a mystery bowler and has always had the variations to fall back upon when his stock ball wasn’t coming off. In 2022, they decided to go with Ashwin, who has different variations as well. For the recently-concluded World Cup, India picked Kuldeep Yadav who has developed a quicker delivery in recent times. These diverse variations give the captain assurance that when their stock deliveries are not working, they can fall back on other options.
That hasn’t always been the case with Chahal. When asked about Chahal’s weakness Kartik responded: “There are times, maybe, because of what the team thinks or what the captain thinks is required of him, he moves away from what his strengths are. His strength is to bowl big spinner, bowl normally, bowl conventional leg spin and throw in all the variations that’s when he has really strived and bowled well. I would want him to stick to that.”