IND vs ENG 3rd Test | Shubman Gill’s Lord’s dilemma: Kuldeep Yadav or more batting depth?

NEW DELHI: “We were tempted to play Kuldeep, but looking at the last match, our lower order didn’t do well, so we decided to add some depth to the batting,” Shubman Gill had said, putting to rest all speculation around Kuldeep Yadav’s exclusion from the playing XI for the Edgbaston Test.Kuldeep, who returned to the Test format for the first time since the home series against New Zealand last October, missed the Border-Gavaskar Trophy due to injury. He was then handed a well-deserved call-up for the England tour. But he didn’t feature at Headingley and was benched again at Edgbaston.All Kuldeep did was carry drinks, relay head coach Gautam Gambhir’s messages to players in the middle, participate in team huddles, and applaud every milestone his teammates achieved on the field.Of his 56 wickets in 13 Tests so far, 21 have come against England — a sign of how much he has troubled the English batters over the years,Kuldeep’s childhood coach, Kapil Dev Pandey, believes the result at Headingley might have been different had Kuldeep played, insisting that the wrist-spinner alongside a fiery Jasprit Bumrah would have formed a lethal combination in the match.”I just don’t understand why Kuldeep didn’t play. During the toss, Shubman Gill said that at Headingley, the lower order flopped, and we fell short of runs, so they included Washington Sundar for his batting in the second Test. But Kuldeep is a wrist-spinner who has troubled England and Australia overseas. Shouldn’t he have been there? Or should he now be sent back to domestic cricket and asked to open the batting? That’s unfair, right?” Kapil Dev Pandey told TimesofIndia.com in an exclusive interview