'We've Let Playing Spin Fall Back a Bit': India's Assistant Coach Admits Batting Unit's Struggles Against Spinners

The Assistant Coach of the Indian Cricket Team, Ryan ten Doeschate has admitted that in the pursuit to improve India’s record playing overseas, the batting unit might have focused more on playing the pacers, resulting in the skill to play spin going down.

The Indian batting unit, barring the skipper Rohit Sharma was certainly exposed during the recent ODI series against Sri Lanka where the Men in Blue were exposed to some quality spin-bowling from the likes of Jeffrey Vandersay, Charith Asalanka and Dunith Wellalage, resulting in a 2-0 series defeat.

Speaking in an interview with TalkSport Cricket, the former Dutch international admitted that the Indian batting unit might have neglected to work on their abilities to play spin, something that Indians were known to be the best at.

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“One of the challenges that I wasn’t expecting and kind of overlooked is the playing of spin of Indian bowlers. We’ve got undone in Sri Lanka and I think the mindset of the Indians has been such that they are so desperate to do well overseas,” he shared.

India has been one of the better sides when playing Test cricket overseas. In the past four years, a total of 19 Tests have been played abroad and the Indian team have managed to win 9 matches. The most famous is the Border-Gavaskar Trophy where India managed to beat Australia 2-1, in the four-match series.

“I think the focus has moved to doing well in Australia and doing well in England. And we’ve kind of let playing spin, which was always the strength of the Indian team, fall back a little bit,” the Indian assistant coach added.

With Gautam Gambhir at the helm as the head coach, ten Doeschate aims to help the Indian Team get back to being the best players of spin bowling once again. Rohit Sharma’s men will have the chance to do that as they take on Bangladesh in the two-match Test series which is set to begin on September 19.

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The Indian team will once again take on Australia, in November, later this year. The series which is going to be the headline event for the format, is set to be an entertaining one, with both sides having the best quality players, thus ensuring that it will be an entertaining contest.