Shubman Gill reveals reason for not playing Kuldeep Yadav
3 min readJul 20, 2026 07:00 AM Shubman Gill has cited pitches not being responsive to spinners and hence India getting defensive with the ball when the tweakers operated in the middle as the reasons for not playing Kuldep Yadav in the series decider at Lord’s against England. Having not given opportunity to Kuldeep throughout the tour, with Jasprit Bumrah missing with a knee injury, there was an opportunity to bring him as an attacking option on Sunday. However, India went into the game with just five bowling options with Axar Patel chosen as the lone spinner.
Made to bowl first, India’s inexperienced attack ended up conceded 387, with 90 runs coming off the final six overs alone. Having already missed a genuine wicket-taking option in the middle-overs right through the series, India had to toil hard at Lord’s where they could manage only three wickets.
Asked for the reason for not including Kuldeep, Gill said: “So the matches that we played prior to this, we had seen the wickets were not offering that much to the spinners. Whenever spinners came into bowl, we felt that we kind of had to go into defensive, whenever the fast bowlers were bowling, it felt like something was happening. And that was the thought process behind not bringing in extra spinner.”
But Gill went on admit that the pitch got slower as the game progressed. “With the fast bowlers, you obviously want to create pressure and see chances get created. Maybe in hindsight, looking at the wicket, I think it got a little bit slow. When we were bowling and when Axar bhai was bowling for us, it didn’t look like the wicket would get that slow, but when they came into bowl, it did look like the wicket got a bit slower as the game went on,” Gill said.
With Bumrah not available, the pace attack included Arshdeep Singh, Prasidh Krishna and the two rookies Prince Yadav and Gurnoor Brar. But none of them managed to trouble England’s top order as Ben Duckett (141) and Jacboth Bethell (91) put on 192 for the first wicket. And Gill admitted that the inexperience with the ball showed.
“Our bowling is a little thin on experience and I think we were put under the pump in this match and didn’t respond well. We didn’t start up well in the powerplay. We gave away too many loose balls and then we were always kind of chasing the game, trying to take wickets, create something — that shouldn’t happen for us. And then the game was already kind of ahead from us and then the last few overs we gave 90 runs, that is where it all went down. It (momentum) completely shifted, we were sort of looking at maybe 340-350 at one point and then they got close to 390 (387). And chasing 390, no matter what surface you’re batting in, it’s never easy,” Gill lamented.
