'To drop a Man of the Match is...' - Former Indian cricketer lambasts Team management for dropping Kuldeep Yadav

Kuldeep Yadav (Source: Twitter)

India had a great start to the Test series in Bangladesh as they beat the hosts by 188 runs at Chattogram. This was the first victory for the Indian Test side outside of the home in 2022. There were many match-winning performances in the first Test for India. Cheteshwar Pujara, Shubman Gill, and Ravichandran Ashwin all had wonderful performances for India.

But one performance from an Indian player who made everyone’s heads turn and take notice was Kuldeep Yadav, he played a Test match after a long gap and changed the game with bat and ball. He scored 40 off 115 with five fours with the bat and picked up 8/113 with the ball. When he was left out in the second Test, there was a huge uproar on social media.

India dropped Kuldeep for Unadkat for the second Test at Dhaka

 "To drop a Man of the Match is absolutely unbelievable...and unbelievable is a very gentle word. I want to use more harsh words. You drop a player who picked eight out of 20 wickets in the last game and have two other spinners. One of those two should have been dropped and he should have played no matter what." Sunil Gavaskar said as quoted by Sportskeeda.

Gavaskar went on to say that he would have used a more explosive word instead of “unbelievable” because he was not happy with the call that the Indian management had taken on Kuldeep and said he should have been in the playing XI and if needed one of Axar Patel or Ravichandran Ashwin should have been sidelined.

India went in with Jaydev Unadkat on what looked like a green pitch at Mirpur. The rationale behind the decision would have been that the conditions are more suitable for the pacers and so India beefed up the pace attack and dropped Kuldeep. Notably Jaydev was playing his first Test in India colours since 2010. He had debuted against South Africa back then.