‘Time to look beyond Ashwin in ODIs’: Harbhajan Singh suggests to bring back ‘Kul-Cha’

New Delhi: India suffered a embarrassing 0-3 defeat against South Africa in the three-match ODI series, and the white-ball series also saw the Men in Blue struggling with the bowling unit especially. Both pace and spin units of India failed to dominate the South Africa batsmen, and allowed them to play big scores throughout the ODI series.

Former Indian off-spinner Harbhajan Singh believes that the Indian team management should look beyond Ravichandran Ashwin and Ishant Sharma in One Day Internationals and suggested to bring back Kul-Cha, which is the duo of wrist spinners Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal.

“I think these two guys (Ishant Sharma and Ashwin) have done really well for, whether you talk about Test cricket or ODIs. With all due respect to R Ashwin, I think he is a champion bowler, but in ODI cricket, I feel, it’s time India start looking for an option, maybe someone who can take the ball in as well as out,” Harbhajan told India Today.

Ashwin, who made his come back to ODIs for the first time since 2017, scalped only wicket from the first two ODIs before he was replaced by Jayant Yadav for the third match against South Africa. While  Yuzvendra Chahal clinched only two wickets from three matches, and failed to trouble the Proteas batsmen in the middle overs.

The former Indian spinner further added that India should bring back the combination of Kuldeep and Chahal, popularly known as ‘KulCha’. Kuldeep and Chahal played together for India for a very long time. However, since the 2019 World Cup, the duo has not played together on a regular basis, eventually Kuldeep’s poor performance sidelined him from the national team. Overall they have played 36 ODIs together and picked 125 wickets between them.

“Someone like Kuldeep Yadav could be a great option. Why don’t we go back to the ‘KulCha’ combination and see what they can bring to the table? They won games for India. It will be a good thing to go back to them.” Singh added.

Harbhajan also stated that Ashwin and Chahal failed to create opportunities with the ball against the opposition batsmen in the recently concluded ODI series against South Africa.

“R Ashwin and Yuzi Chahal played in the South Africa series. They didn’t create too many opportunities with the ball, they were a bit defensive with their approach. There were times when they could have attacked the opposition by putting in another slip or another man catching in. And of course, wickets were very, very true. There is no doubt about it. But no matter how the wickets are, if you’re playing in the World Cup against any opposition, your job is to take wickets in the middle overs. It will come down to how you create opportunities as a bowler,” he added.

“We are missing that spark in the middle-overs where people are going for wickets rather than waiting for things to happen. When Kulcha played together, they were brilliant for the team in the middle-overs. Whenever they played together, they picked wickets and won games for India. I don’t know why they fell apart, why they were not given the opportunities after the World Cup. Maybe it’s time to bring them back or maybe some other X-factor who can take wickets in the middle-overs rather than just doing the containing work.” the 41 year old concluded.