Asia Cup: Have India scored an own goal by not picking a quality spinner?

I was watching, with a lot of curiosity, Pakistan’s ODI match against Afghanistan for many reasons.

Of course, Pakistan won the match comfortably with their pacers destroying the Afghan batting unit.

But I was curious to see the spinners' performance since all of the India’s Asia Cup matches will be played in Sri Lanka. I wanted to see how the wickets will play.

And secondly I wanted to see how Pakistan fare against Afghanistan’s spinners.

Out of the 10 wickets Pakistan lost, eight were taken by Afghanistan spinners, seven of which had gone to the spin trio of Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Rashid Khan and Mohammed Nabi, who are quality spinners.

Yes, the wickets are slow in Sri Lanka. But you need quality spinners to get the big wickets of Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan and Imam ul Haq.

Afghanistan had three quality spinners. And not only did they get wickets, Pakistan batsmen found it difficult to score against them.

India’s squad that was announced on Monday has three spinners in Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja.

However, barring Yadav India lack a quality spinner who can run through a side. Both Jadeja and Axar can contain runs in white-ball cricket and have been picked in the squad more as batting all-rounders.

On flat wickets in India they will not only find it difficult to pick up wickets but even containing the batters could be a challenge.

Yes, you can only pick 11 players in the squad. But the spinners will definitely come into play in Indian conditions, even though the matches will be held at the start of the winter season.

Yuzvendra Chahal is a proven match winner and has repeatedly won India and his IPL franchises many matches with the ball.

And the pair of Kuldeep and Chahal, famously known as Kolchak, has done very well for India since 2017.

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