Auckland: Sunil Gavaskar has made the case for Arshdeep Singh in Test cricket, and he did it within hours of the left-arm seamer’s match-defining spell in India’s first ODI win over New Zealand. Speaking on Sony Sports after India’s five-wicket DLS win at Eden Park on Wednesday, the former India captain said Arshdeep’s ability to swing the ball both ways — on show in his 4 for 70 — demanded a red-ball look.
Arshdeep’s spell was the sharp end of India’s bowling performance. New Zealand, asked to bat first after Shubman Gill won a rain-delayed toss, were bowled out for 185 in 40.2 overs, and Arshdeep removed Will Young, Henry Nicholls, Kyle Jamieson and Glenn Phillips to complete his four-wicket haul. The performance placed him alongside Mohammed Shami and Javagal Srinath as only the third Indian pace bowler to claim a four-wicket haul in an ODI against New Zealand, and his 4 for 70 stands as the fourth-best bowling return by an Indian pace bowler in ODIs on New Zealand soil.
Gavaskar’s praise was specific, not general. “He can swing the ball both ways, inswing and outswing. That creates doubt for the batters as to which ball is coming. His length today was excellent. The line was good in any case. He was making the right-handed batters play across the line from middle and off-stump,” he said. Then came the line that will follow Arshdeep into the next selection conversation: “He bowled extremely well, and I have always said, I have been seeing him for two or three years, that he should be looked at even for Test cricket. If he swings the white ball so much, how much will he swing the red ball?”
Former India batter Ajinkya Rahane, part of the same discussion, supported the call, pointing to the tactical value a left-arm seamer brings in Test cricket. The numbers behind the argument are striking. Arshdeep has played 104 T20Is, taking 151 wickets — the most by an Indian in the format — and 19 ODIs, with 34 wickets, but he has never been capped at Test level. In first-class cricket, he has taken 73 wickets in 24 matches at an average of 30.71, a record that is solid rather than spectacular, and the question now is whether his white-ball mastery translates to the longer format.
Gavaskar also had warm words for the other young seamer in India’s attack. Anshul Kamboj, named Player of the Match for his 2 for 22 from ten overs, dismissed Mitchell Santner and Nathan Smith, and Gavaskar noted that his pace has climbed since his Test debut in England last year, when he bowled at close to 127-130 kph, to more than 135 kph now — evidence, in Gavaskar’s view, of improved fitness as well as skill.
The win itself gave India a 1-0 lead in the five-match ODI series, after Virat Kohli’s 74 powered the chase of a revised 143 from 32 overs. But the longer conversation to come out of Auckland may be about the bowling attack, not the batting. With the second ODI in Wellington on Saturday, Arshdeep has a fresh stage to press a case that one of India’s greatest openers has now made for him in public.
