Border Gavaskar Trophy 2022-23: With Pant out, mantle of tackling spinners on Pujara & Iyer

Border Gavaskar Trophy 2022-23: With Rishabh Pant out, mantle of tackling spinners on Cheteshwar Pujara & Shreyas Iyer. Complete analysis of India batters against spin bowling.

Pujara & Iyer added 149 runs against Bangladesh for 5th wkt (Source: ©BCCI/Twitter)

India’s batters have been traditionally good against spinners. But with the unavailability of Rishabh Pant who sustained injury due to an accident recently, their strength against the slower bowlers has been considerably hampered.

With the Border Gavaskar Trophy 2022-23 just about a month away, it’s a good time to visit the India batters’ numbers against spinners and see who fares the best amongst the lot against spinners.

Pujara has to step up in the absence of Pant

Cheteshwar Pujara is the only batter in the current mix who has been comfortable against Nathan Lyon & Co in Test matches against Australia since the 2016-17 edition of Border Gavaskar Trophy. The Saurashtra batter has scored 573 runs in 16 innings at an average of 81.86 with two hundreds and one fifty-plus score.

Shreyas Iyer is of course really good against spinners but he hasn’t featured in Tests against Australia. And with Rishabh Pant out of contention due to injury, there is no other batter who averages above 50 against Australia’s spinners in the last six years. KL Rahul was good during the Border Gavaskar Trophy 2016-17 and averages 49 against Lyon & Co since 2017.

Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma really need to up the ante in tackling the Australian tweakers as they average just 27.20 and 20.67, respectively, against the Australian spinners since 2017.

Read More: Border Gavaskar Trophy 2022-23: Spin options for India apart from Ashwin if Jadeja misses out

Pant met a tragic accident recently and will not be available for selection (Images: ©BCCI/Twitter)

India's batters against Australia spinners since 2017

Player	Innings	Runs	Batting Average	Strike Rate
Cheteshwar Pujara	16	573	81.86	42.07
Ajinkya Rahane	21	272	30.22	39.77
Rohit Sharma	7	62	20.67	42.77
Rishabh Pant	12	291	58.2	68.63
Ravichandran Ashwin	9	78	19.5	35.78
KL Rahul	8	196	49	54.75
Virat Kohli	10	136	27.2	42.77
Mayank Agarwal	4	82	82	67.77
Ravindra Jadeja	9	135	33.75	58.95
Shubman Gill	5	42	42	49.41

Decoding India batters’ overall performance against spin in the last five years (Timeframe – January 1, 2018 to January 12, 2023)

Player	Runs vs All Bowlers	Runs vs Spin	Avg vs all bowlers	Avg vs Spin	Percentage run vs spin	Outs vs all bowlers	Outs vs spin	Percentage outs vs Spin
Virat Kohli	2832	975	41.65	48.75	34.42	68	20	29.41
Cheteshwar Pujara	2613	1047	34.84