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Cricket PlayersIndia's Test selection dilemma: Under-fire Rishabh Pant and lack of experienced spinners increase headache
IND vs SL: The two Tests in Galle and Colombo will be decided by team selection itself. All eyes are on Rishabh Pant, who failed to get going in the warm-up.
A year ago, a young Shubman Gill-led Indian side punched above their weight to draw 2-2 with England in England. It proved a false dawn, as the 2-0 home defeat to South Africa happened soon after. But if anything, it will be the upcoming series against Sri Lanka that tests their mettle and mindset the most, and it seems overwhelmingly likely that the two Tests in Galle and Colombo will be decided by the team selection itself.
Four names, at least, pick themselves at the top of the batting order. Yashasvi Jaiswal and KL Rahul will open the innings, Devdutt Padikkal will bat at No. 3, and captain Gill will keep his No. 4 berth. Padikkal is most likely to replace the injured Sai Sudharshan (Sarfraz Khan’s late inclusion is cover, nothing more), and an unbeaten 142 in the three-day warm-up game in Colombo made the most emphatic case yet for the Karnataka left-hander. After that, though, is where it gets complicated.
The middle and lower orders lack specialist batters and wicket-taking bowlers. Solving those two in tandem is crucial, and caught in between this Scylla and Charybdis are the two wicket-keepers, Rishabh Pant and Dhruv Jurel.
Pant, Jurel, and the specialist batter dilemma
Deep Dive
A year ago, Pant’s starting spot was never in doubt. He was coming off a stunning 2025 tour of England, where he scored 479 runs at 68.42, including twin hundreds — 134 and 118 — at Headingley. A broken foot at Old Trafford cut that series short, though he heroically returned to the pitch to score a valuable half-century. The returns since have been patchier — a lean IPL saw him step down as Lucknow Super Giants captain, and then he was stripped of the Test vice-captaincy in favour of Rahul ahead of the one-off Test against Afghanistan in June. His stylish 81 betrayed no nerves, but a poor showing of 2 and 28 in the Colombo warm-up has turned the heat up again.
Pant is still, by common consent, one of the side's most important Test batters — chief selector Ajit Agarkar was explicit that the vice-captaincy switch was about experience and workload, not any doubt over Pant's batting. But losing the deputy's tag also strips away some of the protective cover seniority provides. A vice-captain having a lean patch is hard to leave out; a middle-order batter who is simply a name on the sheet is not. The safety net that his reputation provided him is thinner than it was twelve months ago, and there's no recent match-winning knock to lean on if the runs don't come early.
Pant will not be dropped for Galle; his class makes that close to unthinkable. Why then is he in the storm? Because of the adjacent debate his selection raises — Dhruv Jurel at No. 6, and the question of balance. Jurel has spent the past year building a case to be picked as a specialist batter rather than a reserve keeper, with hundreds for India A and a maiden Test century against the West Indies in Ahmedabad last year.
And just last month, he captained India A in Sri Lanka while piling on the runs, scoring a half-century and an unbeaten century in three innings. With Pant keeping wicket, playing Jurel purely as a batter at six adds crucial batting depth. But is that the best solution? After all, it would also mean going into a match that already looks light on wicket-taking threat without a specialist bowling option in that slot.
Handing the gloves to the better batter on form — Jurel — would produce five specialist, reliable batters. Promoting Ravindra Jadeja, one of the best all-rounders in the world, to No. 6, would leave room for an extra bowler. And given the fragility of India’s pace battery, that might be an even greater necessity.
Replacing Ashwin with too many left-handers
That bowling question is the most interesting one of all. India's three frontline spinners in the squad — Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav and recent debutant Manav Suthar — are all left-arm bowlers. Two of them, Jadeja and Suthar, are the same type of left-arm orthodox finger-spinners. Playing all three risks a lack of variety, with nobody turning the ball away from Sri Lanka's left-handers, a job Ravichandran Ashwin used to do as a matter of routine. Replacing Ashwin's guile, disciplined line and length, miserly economy, and crucially, wicket-taking knack, is a tall order. Kuldeep and Jadeja will shoulder much of that responsibility, but the selection of the third spinner will prove key in the island conditions.
That makes the case for handing debutant Saransh Jain — the right-handed Madhya Pradesh off-spinning all-rounder with 188 first-class wickets and a first-class batting average above 31 — a cap ahead of Suthar. Having skilled right-handers in the lower middle order, in Jain and/or Jurel, would fall in line with coach Gautam Gambhir’s preference for left-right batting partnerships.
It’s a harsh call, yes. Suthar was Player of the Match on his Test debut against Afghanistan in June, taking seven wickets in the match, including a six-for, and has done nothing wrong since. Dropping him after a single Test to accommodate a debutant purely for tactical variety is a tough call to defend. But it would arguably be the most balanced call in these conditions, and Gambhir has long shown himself to be a betting man — look no further than Sudharshan and Karun Nair’s trial-by-fire in England last year.
Pace battery low on power
Jasprit Bumrah is out with a knee issue, and the onus is on Mohamad Siraj to lead the hunt for 20 wickets in difficult conditions. The lion-hearted Siraj showed his mettle in England last year in Bumrah’s absence, but he will need support. Should India decide on both Pant and Jurel, and also go with three spinners, then the toss-up will be between Prasidh Krishna and the uncapped Gurnoor Brar.
Prasidh is the more experienced, but form is on Gurnoor’s side. Like Jurel, he played in India A’s unofficial Test v Sri Lanka A last month in Galle — and like Jurel, he performed fabulously, taking a 10-wicket match haul and using his height to trouble the Sri Lankan batters. He can bat too; in the warm-up game, he hit 36 off 18 balls. He would thus be a reassuring tail-ender, much like Siraj, who can attack (as in the warm-up match) and defend (as in England last year) with the bat reliably. But the larger question is of wickets, and that will be the metric he will be judged on.
Any hope of reaching the World Test Championship Final will rest on a clean sweep of Sri Lanka. The spotlight will be as much on the match performances as on the selection calls.
