Hardik Pandya Explains Why India Played Two Spinners at Lord’s

India lost the Edgbaston Test by 31 runs and were already 0-1 down in the series, and now it seems as if the Lord’s Test has also gone out of grasp.

Cricket news: The strategy has backfired till now as both of them had gone wicketless

The visitors will now have to bat extremely well and it will be helpful for them if the rain assists them according to the weather forecast.

The visitors had decided to field in an extra spinner in the likes of Kuldeep Yadav, which perplexed many people as the decision did not work well as he did not get even a hint of turn on day 3.

India were still in the game in the first hour of the second session of day 3 as they reduced the hosts to 131/5. But Jonny Bairstow and Chris Woakes took the game away as they build a heroic 189-run partnership.

Woakes scored his maiden Test century while his partner Bairstow fell just seven runs short of his sixth hundred in the longest format. Both these batsmen ensured the hosts had a healthy lead of 250 runs in the first innings.

India’s all-rounder came to the press conference after the day’s play ended and clarified Kuldeep’s inclusion as he said that the management had thought the pitch doesn’t need more than three pacers.

He also said that had the game been of five days, Kuldeep would have been effective. But the chinaman didn’t trouble the batsmen at all as he was taken for runs quite easily.

“Obviously. We had some thought behind it (Kuldeep’s inclusion). But we felt that three seamers were enough. We bowled properly, gave our full effort. Had this been a five-day game, the spinners would have come to use, but with the rain and everything, it stopped. There weren’t many footmarks created so it was not gripping that much,” he said while speaking to the reporters after the end of day’s play.

Hardik has not been performing well both with the bat as well as the ball and as a result his position in the team has been questioned many times.

So when he asked the same at the press conference he quickly replied that his job is to bowl tight lines and lengths and wait for batsmen to make mistakes and that is why he does not experiment much.

“I don’t have any one particular role. I’m a batsman when I’m batting, bowler when I’m bowling. That’s my role, to keep it right and try to make sure that the batsman makes mistakes rather than me trying out too many stuff. We know that they love to play shots and when you’re doing that you tend to make a few errors,” Pandya added.

According to the weather forecast which says thundery showers in London, the fourth day is likely to get washed out. India will hope the fifth day also goes the same as the conditions will change drastically.