IND vs WI: India assistant coach Ten Doeschate says Kuldeep’s ‘mystery element’ sets him apart

India’s assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate on Sunday said that Kuldeep Yadav’s ability to disguise his options as a mystery-spinner sets him apart from his contemporaries.

Kuldeep wielded his change-ups on the third day of the second Test against West Indies at the Arun Jaitley Stadium to finish with figures of five for 82, his fifth haul of five or more wickets in Tests. The damage inflicted by Kuldeep handed India a 270-run lead.

“The difference with Kuldeep is that he’s not the easiest to pick. He has an element of danger compared to the finger spinners. But yeah, Kuldeep put the ball in the right area and spun it both ways. But I certainly think the fact that a lot of these guys wouldn’t have faced a lot of him, that mystery element makes him a little bit more effective than the other two,” ten Doeschate said after the day.

Despite his flair for deceiving batters, Kuldeep has played just 15 Tests since his debut in Dharamsala in 2017. Moreover, he has played only four Tests outside India, and even two of those were in the subcontinent. He went wicketless in his first Test outside the subcontinent, at Lord’s in 2018, but picked five wickets in his next outing in Sydney a year later.

He was expected to be deployed at some stage in the five-match Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy series, but did not make the cut due to India’s insistence on shoring up its batting.

“It’s very difficult and I just cast my mind back to all the discussions around teams [in England]. I think we got the wickets pretty spot on in England; it was a very high-scoring Test series, so we were always trying to balance playing the batting all-rounder with playing three guys at the end who don’t really bat. 

“But I guess he’s shown [his class] even on an unresponsive wickets; it does make you wonder what happens if we played him at Manchester or at Headingley, but those are calls you have to make in real time and we’re always trying to figure out what’s best, and then we go with the call and the players have been brilliant at buying into it,” ten Doeschate said.

On Sunday, Kuldeep, however, could not repeat his exploits from the first innings, as John Campbell and Shai Hope dominated the final session on a surface which offered as much assistance as was anticipated. Even Kuldeep’s associates, Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar, leaked runs.

Against this backdrop, India appeared to have missed a trick with its decision to enforce a follow-on and not bat for a second time.

“There was a discussion to bat, obviously those last two wickets [in the first innings] took a little bit longer than we would have hoped for, and it probably started going towards the fact where you do look to bat again. But we felt 275 was a good lead. We thought the wicket was going to keep deteriorating. We thought, at the close of play, it would be at its worst. It just seems to have slowed down even more, and it’s quite challenging to get any pace out of the wicket. You have to really fire the ball in, and of course, when you fire the ball in, it has less chance of spinning,” ten Doeschate explained.

West Indies trimmed its deficit to just 97 runs by Stumps, with Hope and Campbell threatening to shrink India’s lead even further on the fourth day. Ten Doeschate, though, felt that India could do with the stiff challenge of finding solutions after spending more than 130 overs on the field already.

“I don’t think we were a million miles off this afternoon. Not to point fingers at the umpire at all, but there were three very close decisions there and if you get even two of those, it looks like a much better day for us. Maybe, a good thing to be challenged. We are probably 130 overs in already; that’s a good test of the legs. We’re going to get sterner tests in the future, where you do have to field for a day and a half, so I guess that’s a good thing.

“They batted nicely, Shai Hope and John Campbell batted beautifully. So, we come back tomorrow, get our plans right, and hopefully get those last four batters out and get into the tail. It is a mental adjustment. We obviously monitor speeds. It is probably the one thing you can play with, it’s striking the balance and using the changes in pace to get a mistake out of the batter,” ten Doeschate said.

Published on Oct 12, 2025