Ravi Bishnoi’s Old Trafford collapse has handed India a selection call they can’t dodge

India lost more than a match at Old Trafford. In the second T20I against England they also lost the argument for picking Ravi Bishnoi, and with the series 1-0 down and the third game at Trent Bridge to come on July 7, the leg-spinner has become India’s most uncomfortable selection question.

The over that turned the match

The bare figures are grim enough: nought for 60 from four overs, not a single wicket, an economy that would embarrass a part-timer. The damage was concentrated in the 17th over, when Jacob Bethell helped himself to 29 runs, three of them sixes. It was the third most expensive over by an India bowler in men’s T20Is, and it broke the back of the chase.

What made it worse was how the runs came. Across the innings Bishnoi bowled three no-balls, all off the back foot, the first time a spinner from a Full Member side has done that in a men’s T20I. A back-foot no-ball from a leg-spinner is not a marginal misjudgement of the front line. It is a bowler losing track of where his feet are landing in his own delivery stride. Each one brought a free hit, and against a batter in Bethell’s mood those were never going to be wasted.

This was not a one-off

The easy defence is that anyone can have a bad night. The harder truth is that the warning signs were already flashing. Bishnoi played only nine of Rajasthan Royals’ matches in this year’s IPL, left out for stretches because his control had wavered, and the gap between leaking runs at franchise level and doing it in India colours is thinner than selectors like to admit. Picking him for England always carried a risk. Old Trafford was that risk arriving on schedule.

To his credit, captain Shreyas Iyer refused to hang his bowler out to dry afterwards. He said he knew where the game had slipped away but did not want to pinpoint any single player, which is the right thing for a captain to say in public. It is not, though, the same thing as the selection having been right.

India have better options sitting out

Here is what makes the persistence hard to justify: India did not bring a thin spin group to England. Varun Chakravarthy, one of the more feared wrist-spinners in white-ball cricket, is in the squad. So is Washington Sundar, and so is Axar Patel. India carried three spinners into the first match and still have plenty of room to shuffle the balance. Loyalty to a struggling bowler is admirable up to a point, but there is a difference between backing a player and ignoring what is sitting in front of you.

My own view is that India should make the change at Trent Bridge. Not as a punishment, and not because one over defines a career, but because a bowler who has just lost his run-up in front of a big crowd needs time out of the firing line far more than he needs to be thrown back into a must-win game. Chakravarthy offers control and a wicket threat in the same package. On current evidence, that is not a close call.

What happens next tells you plenty

India will frame whatever they decide as a cricketing choice, and they are entitled to. But the eleven that lines up at Trent Bridge will say something about how this side handles pressure. Stick with Bishnoi and it reads as stubbornness dressed up as faith. Change it and India quietly concede that the Old Trafford call did not work. Either way, a leg-spinner’s bad half-hour has become the most interesting thing about a series India cannot afford to let slip.

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