{"id":224479,"date":"2025-10-25T10:15:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T10:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/224479\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T10:15:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T10:15:27","slug":"the-curious-case-of-allrounder-nitish-reddy-underused-and-undervalued-in-indias-xi-cricket-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/224479\/","title":{"rendered":"The curious case of allrounder Nitish Reddy: Underused and undervalued in India\u2019s XI | Cricket News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The Nitish Kumar Reddy of India (Photo by Mark Brake\/Getty Images) Nitish Kumar Reddy was fast-tracked into the Indian team last year as a key piece to the puzzle of forming the perfect playing XI. Now, it appears the team management is unsure about the seambowling allrounder\u2019s exact role. Can he actually be Hardik Pandya<\/a>\u2019s like-for-like backup? For someone who scored a Test hundred in trying circumstances at the MCG last year and has an established IPL reputation batting up the order, Reddy is now relegated to No. 8 and seldom called on to bowl in key moments of the game.The team management under head coach Gautam Gambhir<\/a> insisted Reddy needed more game time in international cricket, even as he bowled just four overs in the two Tests at home against West Indies this month. He was given an opportunity to bat at No. 5 in the second Test after Yashasvi Jaiswal<\/a> and Shubman Gill had already put up a huge score on the board.<\/p>\n

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On paper, his skills provide absolute balance to the team. But he gets to do too little on the park. That India went without an out-and-out strike spinner like Kuldeep Yadav in the first two ODIs in Australia played a major part in India losing the series in Adelaide before reaching Sydney for the third and final ODI on Saturday.The underutilization of Reddy is somewhat reminiscent of how Shardul Thakur played the two Test matches in England this summer. Gill, as a captain, makes his reluctance in a player very apparent with his tactics on the park. Thakur bowled just 27 out of the 339 overs India bowled in Leeds and Manchester. During the second Test against West Indies in Delhi, India\u2019s assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate conceded that the team management now wonders if Kuldeep could have been played instead in those two matches in England.This raises the question of whether the team management and captain are on the same page when it comes to picking the XI. Former India wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta, who has been following the team closely as a broadcaster, said, \u201cFirst, one has to check if Gill and Gambhir are on the same page. It could also stem from lack of conviction. Gill will get more clarity about what he exactly wants from his team. They are trying to give Reddy exposure, but that can\u2019t happen by just standing in the field doing very little,\u201d Dasgupta told TOI.Since Gambhir has assumed the head coach\u2019s position, he has been very forthright about his vision of playing with a team that has batting depth, even if it results in sacrificing a strike bowler. \u201cModern-day white-ball cricket demands batting depth. India\u2019s real problem is their usual No. 9, 10 and 11 are quintessential tailenders. Kuldeep can hold his own as a batter, but you can\u2019t compare it to the tailenders of the SENA countries. Reddy is a batter who can bowl. The person who bats at No. 8 has to be the other way around. And without Bumrah, Kuldeep has to be the big strike bowler,\u201d claimed Dasgupta.One can\u2019t fault the team management for craving a genuine seambowling allrounder in the mould of Ben Stokes, Pandya and Cameron Green. Reddy, however, is far from the finished product. One may recall that when Pandya\u2019s bowling took a backseat in 2021, the selectors were reluctant to play him as a batter until he recovered to bowl at full tilt. Reddy the bowler is not bankable enough for Gill.\u201cI hope they don\u2019t get stuck with finding Pandya\u2019s like-for-like backup. They have to be flexible with the options they have. Even if they want to persist with Reddy, he needs to be looked at differently and thrown into the deeper end,\u201d Dasgupta reckoned.Gill is very early into his captaincy career. He has found himself in situations when he is operating with less than 11 players on the park due to his lack of confidence in certain players. He got away with it in England, but it is most likely that he will be found out soon in international cricket.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nitish Kumar Reddy of India (Photo by Mark Brake\/Getty Images) Nitish Kumar Reddy was fast-tracked into the Indian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1723,1721,18855,27710,9318,17772,94413,95732,9317,101,56,54,55,15622],"class_list":{"0":"post-224479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-ben-stokes","9":"tag-cricket","10":"tag-gautam-gambhir","11":"tag-hardik-pandya","12":"tag-kuldeep-yadav","13":"tag-nitish-kumar-reddy","14":"tag-playing-xi","15":"tag-seam-bowling-all-rounder","16":"tag-shardul-thakur","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-unitedkingdom","21":"tag-yashasvi-jaiswal"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}