Former Team India player Sanjay Manjrekar has said that India made a mistake by fielding two spinners in the final of the ICC World Test Championship against New Zealand. India had fielded Ravichandran Ashwin and all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja, while the New Zealand team took the field with five fast bowlers.
“If you have to look at how India went about before the game started, picking two spinners was always a debatable selection especially when the conditions were overcast and the toss was delayed by a day. They picked one player for his batting, which was Jadeja, and his left-arm spin wasn’t the reason he was picked. He was picked for his batting and that is something that I am always against,” Manjrekar said on ESPNCricinfo.
“You have got to pick specialist players in the team and if they felt that the pitch was dry and turning, they would have picked Jadeja for his left-arm spin, along with Ashwin, that would have made sense. But they picked him for his batting and I think that backfired as mostly it does,” he added.
Most of the time in the final was affected by bad weather and the result came on reserve day. On the sixth day, New Zealand won the title by defeating India by eight wickets.