So Many Jadejas, So Few Ashwins: What Is Going Wrong In India's Off-Spin Pipeline?

News cricket So Many Jadejas, So Few Ashwins: What Is Going Wrong In India's Off-Spin Pipeline?

So Many Jadejas, So Few Ashwins: What Is Going Wrong In India's Off-Spin Pipeline?

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Last Updated: November 06, 2026, 17:21 IST

Huge population, infinite resources, mega competition for every place. These are used as sticks to beat Indian cricket with. Why, then, the machine is not minting any off-spinners?

Ashwin was a once-in-a-generation artist. Will there never be another? (AFP)

Since Ravichandran Ashwin retired, India has recorded 670 balls of off-spin in Test cricket, picking up 17 wickets. Only West Indies have bowled more for fewer wickets.

Since January 2025, India’s off-spinners have the fourth-worst bowling average among 20 ODI nations. In the current World Test Championship (WTC) cycle, no team still alive in the race for the final averages worse with off-spinners than India’s 35.82.

In the last five years of the IPL, no off-spinner has made it to the top-10 Indian wicket-takers list. Off-spin is the only bowling type to suffer that fate; left-arm wrist-spin, leg-spin, left-arm orthodox spin, left-arm pace and right-arm pace all have at least one.

India has an off-spin production-line problem, one that transcends formats.

While it may have gone unnoticed otherwise, Ashwin’s absence has been rather palpable in Test cricket.

He averaged 19.9 against left-handers in this format. Without him, when India drew the second Test against Sri Lanka in Colombo this year, Sonal Dinusha, a left-hander, scored twin centuries. In the WTC Test before that, when India lost to South Africa in Guwahati in 2025, Senuran Muthusamy, also a left-hander, scored 109 off 206.

In that South Africa series, off-spinner Simon Harmer schooled the hosts with his accuracy and dexterity. In Sri Lanka, India’s latest off-spin debutant, Saransh Jain, looked a beat behind for the level, managing a solitary wicket, and was promptly dropped.

The BCCI selectors are often chided for not picking the best of India’s domestic system, but Jain was the highest wicket-taking off-spinner in the 2025-26 Ranji Trophy.

The man he replaced, Washington Sundar, is now the only off-spin option around. And even he can hardly be called a product of the Ranji Trophy.

The Tamilian made his ODI and T20I debuts after an impressive IPL season with Rising Pune Supergiant, replacing an injured Ashwin seamlessly. At that time, Sundar had only seven First-Class wickets from five matches to show for himself.

Sundar is now in New Zealand. If he fails, he’ll need to squint hard to find any significant off-spin competition back home.

For a country whose population, depth and resources are often used as a stick to beat it with, with a history of underutilised talent, and dozens of unlucky-not-to-make-it Ranji legends, this is alien territory.

So, what’s going wrong?

News18 spoke to several people in and around the domestic system, and the potential issues are quite wide-ranging, at every level.

One consensus is that in India, there are more right-handers than left-handers in most teams and off-spinners are being increasingly seen as a negative match-up.

Usman Ghani, the 2024-25 Ranji Trophy-winning coach with Vidarbha, admits as much.

“We have a very good off-spinner, but we always have that thought process: how many left-handers are there in the team, how many right-handers are there, and then we make a playing combination," he says.

Data shows that in the DRS era, off-spinners enjoy more success when bowling to left-handers than right-handers, as is clear from their Test bowling average (Figure 1) and economy rate (Figure 2) over the years. The reverse is true for left-arm orthodox spinners.

It’s easier to challenge both edges of the bat when you are naturally turning the ball away from the batter. For example, an offie bowling to a LHB from around the wicket can turn the ball away, or bowl an arm ball to keep it straight with his momentum, testing the inside edge.

Against the RHBs, if bowling from over the wicket, the off-spinner can turn the ball in but needs to develop a complex variation, like the doosra or the carrom ball, to challenge the outside edge. The other option is to go around the wicket, which is not preferred because then the chances of pitching the ball outside the leg-stump go up, thus reducing LBWs.

Ghani makes another concomitant point.

“White-ball cricket has come up so much, and the boys are very fit and capable of power hitting," he says. “With their advanced bats, an off-spinner nowadays becomes a bunny."

In Test cricket in India during 2001–2012, a six was hit once every 293 balls. In 2012-2026, a six was hit every 147 balls — double the frequency.

AC Prathiban, a former Tamil Nadu off-spinner and now personal coach of India international Varun Chakravarthy, believes that this big-hitting prowess means that red-ball matches can change in one session and that coaches tend to de-risk to avoid such a situation.

“The game has evolved in a way that whenever an off-spinner comes, it’s seen as the ideal time for the batters to score runs," Prathiban says. “Off-spinners will still eventually take wickets, but not many teams are ready to give them that extra leverage to go for 3.5 or 4 runs/over and wait for them to pick 4 or 5 wickets. They want people who can bowl economically."

“Ten years back, in the Ranji Trophy, if you give 250 runs in a day, that’s bad bowling. But today if you give 280, that means you have bowled well, because now it is not about picking wickets. It’s about bowling tight, bowling tight, bowling tight," he adds.

Off-spinners’ economy rates in Tests have indeed increased marginally over the last few years (Figure 3). A bigger surge has come in six-hitting.

Ghani and other coaches prefer left-arm spinners, like Vidarbha’s Harsh Dubey, because they haven’t been as adversely affected by the T20 boom (Figure 4).

Left-arm spinners are as expensive against LHBs as off-spinners are against RHBs. But when it comes to bowling to RHBs, left-arm spinners’ economy rates have remained under 3, and sixes/ball have been stable.

So, if they are of similar abilities, it seems logical to pick a left-arm spinner over an off-spinner. And, at face value, the coaches have been proven right, much to the detriment of the off-spin bench strength in the country.

While off-spinners’ output has been steady (and low) over the last 20 years, left-arm spinners have seen an aggressive surge (Figure 5). The last five years have seen the most left-arm spinners among the top-20 wicket-takers of the Ranji Trophy in the last 20 years.

Dubey, Manav Suthar, R Sai Kishore and Shahbaz Nadeem were all there and have played for India. The former three are young and fiercely competing for a place in the Test side to replace an ageing Ravindra Jadeja.

Left-arm spinners are also leading the attacks for a bigger assortment of teams than before.

Only 11 different sides have had off-spinners in the top-20 wicket-takers of the Ranji Trophy since 2015-16 (three of them have the same bowler, Jalaj Saxena). For left-arm spinners, the number is about triple that.

While spin workloads and exploits were shared between the two finger-spin types until about ten years ago, some Ranji teams are now happy to even play two left-arm spinners together.

The Pitch

There’s not much of a consensus among the interviewees when asked if pitches in Ranji Trophy have gotten flatter — which is difficult to quantify as data for the competition is not publicly available — or if off-spinners might have faced the brunt of it.

Prathiban feels that tracks in domestic cricket are getting flatter to a degree that it makes left-arm spinners plus three pacers a straightforward attack combination. Ghani believes there has been more help for pacers ‘in the last seven-eight years’, with an increase in green-tops, because India wanted to develop fast-bowlers for Test cricket, which has cramped the space for spinners.

But WV Raman, the former India batter who played a crucial role in Ashwin’s early development, says that pitches are hardly to be blamed.

“There will be a phase in every decade, where we will suddenly get to see a spate of tall scores, and you would think, ‘What’s happening here? The pitches are too flat.’ But even when one got to see fairly responsive tracks at Bangalore during the Duleep Trophy, I am sorry to say that I didn’t see bowlers making use of whatever help they had on the surfaces. That will always boil down to the craft that the bowler possesses," he argues.

We can try and look at the IPL because a) we do have some data for it and b) even if the T20 league may not be seen as direct proof of Test quality, it’s regularly used as a benchmark for mettle against world-class players.

Arnav Jain for Best of Cricket analysed earlier this year that pitches in the league are getting flatter and more homogeneous every year. Swing, seam movement and turn are all on a downward track, because almost all grounds in India are offering true bounce and pace.

Simultaneously, off-spinners are fast becoming IPL-endangered.

The 2026 season saw the fewest number of unique off-spinners, 10, since available records began in 2015, and only three of them were Indians — Sundar, Ayush Badoni, and Tripurana Vijay. The season also had the most matches without a single ball of off-spin (41).

For off-spinners to survive in an era where most of the match-ups, the sport’s boundary-hitting growth and its geometry are against them, they need some kind of external help. That is neither coming from the pitches nor the boundary lengths.

Meanwhile, 15 different left-arm spinners participated in IPL 2026 (second-highest in the data), including 12 Indians, and 63 matches saw at least one ball of left-arm spin (highest).

Left-arm spinners are now bowling more balls, taking more wickets, and at better averages (Figure 6) in the IPL than five years ago.

But for off-spin, the ramifications of white-ball cricket and its highways go beyond the left-arm spin surge.

Raman, who finds the off-spin vs RHB negative match-up ‘highly overrated’, feels the ‘hustle-bustle about playing the T20 format’ allows little time for off-spinners to hone the attacking, wicket-taking ‘craft’ of their game because they are so busy defending.

“It has to be borne in mind that it’s all about developing a craft and finding ways and means to take wickets," he asserts. “Spinners have been used more as defensive weapons, and it’s very obvious to them that the confidence is not there. Unless a bowler enjoys the confidence of his team management—and especially the skipper—it is going to be very difficult for him to blossom and do the job that he is capable of doing."

Sai Krishna, a data analyst who works with several international cricketers and coaches, has another argument. He believes that white-ball cricket has subtly affected the natural techniques and bowling speeds of the spinners who regularly switch between formats.

In Test cricket, the optimal speed to take wickets for an off-spinner is anywhere between 75 and 90 kph. This is where the ball turns the most, while also giving the batter minimal time to react to it.

However, as Cricinfo revealed recently, that’s not what works in the IPL, with spinners now trying to bowl quicker in response to the increase in batters’ boundary attempts and benign pitches. In IPL 2023-2026, only two finger spinners had a median speed of under 90 kph — Abhishek Sharma and Moeen Ali.

Sai describes ‘stock speed’ for a spinner as the one where they impart the most revolutions on the ball and feel most comfortable in their action. If a spinner is playing a lot of white-ball cricket, he would bowl 90 kph-plus regularly, thus upping the stock speed.

Most finger spinners in India are 5-6 kph quicker in the IPL than in Test cricket. Sundar, for example, has a median IPL speed of 96 kph, which is down to 91 kph for Tests, while Ashwin bowled at around 88 kph in Tests and 94 kph in the IPL.

Bringing it down to under 90 kph for Test cricket, without compromising on rhythm and accuracy, is not straightforward.

“Off-spinners’ stock speed has grown to be 90-95, which is where they feel comfortable in white-ball cricket," Sai says. “But if you bowl that in Test matches, you are never going to get wickets regularly, unless you are on a turner. There’s also the sidespin vs overspin factor – different releases that are used at different junctures across the three formats. Putting them together isn’t easy."

For good measure, the turnarounds between white-ball cricket and Tests are only getting shorter. There are barely four days between the fifth ODI and India’s first Test of the ongoing New Zealand tour.

The Picture

To be an off-spinner in India, being an off-spinner is not enough.

Batting depth is in vogue around the world. Every white-ball team wants batters up to number nine; tailenders’ batting averages and strike rates are up in white-ball cricket, and in some cases, like India, even Test teams are picking all-rounders over specialists.

While in Tests, bowling all-rounders are potential game-changers because of their cameos, in 50-over cricket, they are a necessity because it allows the top and middle-order more freedom and strengthens the team’s finishing prowess. In T20s, because there are just 120 balls available every innings, there’s a strong argument to have no specialist spinners at all.

In IPL 2015-2026, spin all-rounders (spinners who bat more than 5 balls/match) scored more runs, at better strike rates, and were less expensive with the ball than specialist spinners (Figure 7). The only metric where specialist spinners have been consistently ahead is their wicket-taking, where all-rounders seem to be catching up, too.

“For you to be a specialist off-spinner who bats at number 8—even someone like Saransh Jain or Jalaj Saxena, that caliber of off-spinner—they will find it hard to get picked in a white-ball team, right?" Sai asks. “Because you can’t bat them in the top 7 in a white-ball team. Even the ones who are batting in the top 7 in white-ball teams are all batters who can bowl: Tilak Varma, Naman Dhir, Riyan Parag, and others."

In Ranchi, Ashish Kumar runs an academy, which recently gave India under-19 a left-arm spinner, Ishan Om. He says that at the academy level, training for specialist off-spin has gone to negligible levels, and now more focus is on batting.

“There are still a lot of good, specialist off-spinners around, but it’s difficult for them to get into white-ball teams because every coach wants someone who can bat," he says. “Batting depth is important for every team because the game has become faster, with higher scores."

He adds that if a kid comes through wanting to become an off-spinner, he’s not stopped, but told that he needs to focus on batting equally, so their time is divided in training two skills.

Off-spinners are judged more harshly on their batting because otherwise their value gets limited to turning tracks or against oppositions with a host of left-handers.

“If you have two off-spinners, one who can bat, and the other who only bowls, the former will be picked," he says.

In Kanpur, Kapil Pandey, the coach of India international Kuldeep Yadav, agrees. He says that in all formats, most teams are now happy to have one of their batters become part-time off-spinners, in case they need that skill for matches.

“If you can do that, the child’s chances of selection gets doubled," Pandey says.

Sai points out a couple more possible and difficult-to-quantify issues, making this an overall complicated issue to solve. Firstly, off-spinners often work great in tandem with left-arm pacers, because the latter naturally create a rough in the pitch for the former because of their bowling action and follow-throughs — just like Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon.

India produces far more right-arm pacers than left-arm quicks (Figure 5), which deserves a separate investigation.

“And secondly," Sai adds, “If more left-arm spinners get picked in the IPL, they get to play and practice with IPL-level players — they are naturally going to come back to domestic cricket a better bowler in some way. Even if it doesn’t help their red-ball pedigree as such, they will at least be, in theory, more confident in their abilities."

So, what can be done about it?

Before we get into possible remedies, in the system’s defense, Jalaj Saxena, India’s leading off-spinner behind Ashwin and one of the dozens of unlucky-not-to-make-it Ranji legends, believes that the situation isn’t as bad as we make it out to be.

For him, this is nothing but a phase of transition, where cricket’s demands have changed, and the off-spin talent is catching up to it.

“A lot of young off-spinners are coming," he says. “In fact, they’re coming with more variations—they are maybe not traditional off-spinners like before—but they’re learning new things nowadays because of the IPL. Cricket is changing; as cricket changes, dynamics change, so obviously the skill set will change. I feel players are adapting themselves more according to that demand."

Jalaj agrees that all-round abilities are now crucial but disagrees that pitches in Ranji Trophy have changed much over the years, and finds them as varied as ever.

He also feels that young spinners around India have more exposure, thanks to the BCCI increasing the number of age-group competitions. For him, it’s only a matter of young off-spinners who are part of a few domestic teams gaining enough experience to enter their peaks.

“Generally an off-spinner matures at 27–28," he says. “Unlike a young fast bowler… a raw fast bowler comes at 19 or 20 and is at his peak. A spinner isn’t like that—as experience comes, they go a little towards their peak… Spin is an art where it’s not just about talent; it’s more about how many situations you’ve lived, how many times you’ve experienced those situations, and what you’ve learned from them. A spinner is not just about bowling; it’s also about learning about the situation. Where to bowl, what length and trajectory for which wicket—we learn many of these things by playing."

He might be proven right if someone like Tanush Kotian, 28, can carry on with his Ranji form this season after a couple of tough years and produce a bumper season. But isn’t there a quicker way to mitigate some of the issues we are seeing?

Jalaj mentions variations in passing, and a Wisden video tracing the decline of off-spin in the world and England noted how off-spin’s golden era was when the doosra was on the rise in white-ball and Test cricket, led by the likes of Saeed Ajmal — until the ICC’s crackdown on their bowling actions ended it as quickly as it began.

This makes you think that perhaps off-spin could become a challenge again if some special talent can crack the variation puzzle.

But Raman counters that it could be more of a ‘distraction’ away from the fundamentals of good spin bowling, which is mastery of the stock ball.

Prathiban also argues that bowling variations like the carrom ball or a legal version of doosra at around 90kph while staying under the bowling action rules puts a kind of strain on the body that is difficult to sustain at the Test level.

“Variations can help you, but can never be the solution," Prathiban says. “It can create doubts in a batter’s mind, but being a mystery spinner in a Test game takes a lot out of their body. The energy levels they have to put into a ball are immense—like what Varun does, or what Rashid Khan does, or what Sunil Narine does. It looks very normal to us, but the effort they put into their fingers and shoulders is so much."

One of the solutions he offers is tweaking the Ranji Trophy points system, where outright wins get you six points (seven if the margin is huge) and first-innings leads without a win also get you three. He wants the points for draws reduce to wins are awarded more.

“To win an outright game—unless you are playing in extreme winter conditions—it has to be spinners," he says. “That is India for you… If you could change the point system, that will really bring back our own spinners into this."

Pandey, Raman and Ghani, meanwhile, want to remedy it the old-fashioned way.

Pandey argues that something as simple as increasing the squad size at the age-group competitions level, could push coaches to consider taking off-spinners on-board, and maybe even using them over part-timers for specific matches.

He wants the BCCI to work closely with academy-level coaches, where talent is first discovered and prepared for age-group levels, and push them to include more spinners.

“We didn’t pay attention to spinners, never thought that in our country there could be a shortage of spinners also," he says. “Because of that, just like dinosaurs disappeared, off-spinners have also disappeared in the same way."

Raman wants spinners to be taught how to ‘compartmentalise’ bowling for different formats. Ghani, meanwhile, feels this can be done if BCCI holds specialised spin camps, just like it’s being done for pacers in recent years. He also suggests using the board-certified match referees, who attend the games anyway, for scouting better spinners at junior levels.

“We as coaches also sometimes don’t make them play in the 11," Ghani adds. “So that is our moral duty also: if there is a good off-spinner, we should give them chances to play."

Raman is confident that if a player shows the right ‘zeal’ for it, at least in Tests, specialised off-spinners can survive and thrive.

“Let us face it," he says. “Even if you have to consider it as very difficult or on the verge of extinction, we have always had somebody do things against the grain. We had the Srikkanths, and the Sehwags, and then you’ve got Vaibhav Sooryavanshi going hammer and tongs against the best bowlers. It is very, very silly to say that it is not possible. It is possible provided that enough time is put into it, and enough good inputs are given by people who are handling them. Ironically, Anil Kumble and Ashwin never started as spinners but are now India’s two highest wicket-takers. What does it show you?"

Sports tend to be cyclical. Perhaps the rise of left-arm spinners will prompt teams to offset it with for more left-handers in the batting lineups, which will, in turn, make space for off-spinners as a positive match-up.

Or perhaps it’ll take more drastic results before India wakes up to the real contributions of Ashwin and the fact that it will need to be replaced with genuine effort and care. Or, maybe, it’s just about someone discovering yet another genius of the turning ball.

In either case, it seems like in this crucial time for the sport, off-spin epitomises something larger — the art of wicket-taking, of stumping batters who don’t want to leave their crease, of bowlers making things happen as equal protagonists and not reactionaries. How this delicate balance is looked at in India, and the world would tell us as much about cricket’s direction as anything else.

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First Published: November 06, 2026, 16:07 IST

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