WTC Final 2023: Will playing Umesh Yadav ahead of R Ashwin and Jaydev Unadkat haunt India for a long time?

The two situations can be treated as two separate questions. They aren’t interlinked per se. The conditions at the Oval and the weather forecast made it a no-brainer that the two teams would enter the match with a combination of four pacers and a spinner.

The two teams did exactly the same. Pat Cummins saying he would also have opted to bowl first in overcast London conditions and the green-tinge pitch at The Oval re-ensured that Rohit Sharma’s decision at toss was accurate. Ignore if experts have to say anything on this in the coming days.

Two world-class captains of world-class teams agreeing with the same team combination and similar wish of bowling first, should put all the experts at bay.

However, one can always debate if veteran off-spinner and legend in his own rights, Ashwin should have been sacrificed for an extra pacer. Such a massive move could have been justified only by that extra pacer himself. It wasn’t like the harsh call was made to play four bowlers of equal quality.

Keeping aside Mohammed Shami and Mohammed Siraj, in all honesty one will agree that Umesh Yadav does not possess the same skillset. In a match as big as the WTC final 2023, Umesh and not Shardul Thakur became the fourth seamer.

Umesh Yadav bowled nine overs before Tea and leaked 32 runs without taking any wicket. He was taken to the cleaners by David Warner. He sprayed the red cherry all over the pitch. His deliveries would often drift towards the leg side. Failing to hit the deck with speed and also failing to bowl in a proper channel over a prolonged period to what we call ‘set the batter’ in Test cricket, is unacceptable at this stage.

Someone like Shardul would bat and give the important breakthroughs from time to time. He has a knack of doing it and he did exactly the same by dismissing a well set David Warner before lunch.

It’s here when one starts to miss a proven match-winner in Ravichandran Ashwin. Keeping out Ashwin for a Jasprit Bumrah looks fine but was it wise to leave him out for Umesh Yadav? Ashwin has a solid record against left-handed batters. Australia have three left-hand batters in their line-up – Usman Khawaja, Travis Head and Alex Carey. Head has already done the damage with his brisk batting.

Sometimes the stature of the player also has a huge role to play. Presence of a player like Ashwin boasts the morale of the entire team. Ashwin could have surely continued to put pressure on Australian batters after the pressure created by the other pacers. Australia were 76/3 at one stage but India let them off the hook.

If the conditions made it impossible for Ashwin to be included, one could have gone with Jaydev Unadkat. The left-arm pacer would have brought variation in the Indian bowling attack. Also, the Saurashtra captain has done tremendously well in domestic red-ball matches and could have been rewarded.

But may be, India were carried away by the 56 Test matches Umesh had played before the ongoing Test or his performance in the last outing at The Oval. In 2021, the Vidarbha pacer had dismissed Joe root, Dawid Malan and Craig Overton in the first innings. In the second innings, he removed the tail-enders Chris Woakes, Craig Overton and James Anderson.

By keeping out Ashwin and Unadkat for Umesh, India definitely have missed a trick.