Would’ve loved Kuldeep as Impact Player in 2nd innings: KL Rahul
India’s stand-in captain KL Rahul has said that he would have loved to have wrist-spinner Kuldeep Yadav in the second innings of the Mirpur Test match had there been an ‘Impact Player’ rule in place.
‘That was the right decision’ – KL Rahul on Jaydev Unadkat’s inclusion
Kuldeep was adjudged the Player of the Match in the first Test in Chattogram for bagging eight wickets. But, he was surprisingly benched for second Test as the team management preferred Jaydev Unadkat over him. The decision invited severe criticisms from the fans and the cricket pundits.
“If we had Impact Player rule here like in the IPL, I would have loved to have Kuldeep in the second innings,” said KL Rahul as quoted by a cricket news website.
“It was a tough call [on the first morning], knowing and understanding that he had just won the [Chattogram] Test for us. But seeing the pitch before the game and on the first day, we felt that there will be assistance for both fast bowlers and spinners. Keeping that in mind we wanted to play the best balanced team we can. And that’s the call we made,” he added.
“I don’t regret that, and that was the right decision. If you see the 20 wickets we took, a lot of wickets [ten] even the fast bowlers took. They had a lot of assistance and there was a lot of inconsistent bounce. All these decisions we took keeping in mind the experience of playing here [Mirpur] in the ODIs,” said the 30-year-old.
Unadkat, however, did not disappoint, finishing with figures of 2/50 in the first innings and 1/17 in the second. Meanwhile, chasing 145, India were in a spot of bother at 74/7 on Day 4 before an unbeaten 71-run eighth wicket stand between Ravichandran Ashwin (42) and Shreyas Iyer (29) saved the day for the visitors.
