It couldn’t have been easy being Kuldeep Yadav on the entertaining Test tour of England this summer. More than one surface, including in the opening Test in Leeds, practically demanded that India make use of the magic of the left-arm wrist-spinner, but much as first-time captain Shubman Gill and Gautam Gambhir would have loved to field the game-changer, they simply couldn’t accommodate him in their plans.

His challenges in England sum up Kuldeep’s troubled journey in Test cricket. Despite taking four wickets on debut on a true deck in Dharamsala against Australia in March 2017, and despite being anointed India’s No. 1 spinner by then coach Ravi Shastri after his maiden five-wicket haul in Sydney in January 2019, the 30-year-old’s Test appearances have been restricted to 13 outings (56 wickets) in eight and a half years.