Gautam Gambhir's maiden assignment as head coach began on a bittersweet note as India whitewashed Sri Lanka 3-0 in T20Is before going down 0-2 in the ODIs. After the first game ended in a tie – with no Super Over – Sri Lanka won the second and third ODIs with convincing margins. The fact that they didn't have some of their premier players participating in the series – Matheesha Pathirana, Wanindu Hasaranga, Dilshan Madushanka – because of injuries is what makes the win against the Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli-starrer Team India even sweeter.

The ODI series defeat brought to life one of India's long-standing issues – their batters' struggle against quality spin. In the three ODIs, India lost 27 out of their 30 wickets to spinners, with Jeffrey Vandersay's 6/33 hurting the Men in Blue in the second game before Dunith Wellalage's five-wicket-haul picked up the bones in the decider. Wellalage had also troubled the same team a year ago at the Asia Cup 2023 in Colombo but India somehow managed to crawl to victory.

Gone are the days when Indian batting would dominate spin regardless of where it was playing. Barring the tour of Sri Lanka in 2008, when 'mystery' bowler Ajantha Mendis was unleashed, not once did India's fabled batting line-up of the 2000s – featuring Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly faltered, whereas today it has become the norm. Be it a part-time spinner or a specialised tweaker, the last decade has been haunting whenever Indian batting is tested against spin, and the need to rectify it has to be one of Gambhir's foremost challenges.

As to why there's been a sharp decline in India's ability to play spin, Virender Sehwag, who made a career out of smashing spinner, made a very interesting point. India's only batter to smash 2 Test triple-centuries in Tests, Sehwag feels India's spin woes stem from two reasons: lack of quality spinners and thus, lack of its exposure in domestic cricket.

Why the decline?

"One reason for this is that the more white ball cricket there is, the less spinners will come, because in T20 cricket you bowl 24 balls and do not flight them, so you do not develop the skill to get the batsman out. I think that could be one reason. Indian players also play less domestic cricket. In domestic cricket you get to play more spin than in international cricket. So that can also be a reason. I think there are no quality spinners in India right now whom I see who can fly well and take wickets," Sehwag told Amar Ujwala.

"In our time, Dravid, Sachin, Ganguly, Laxman, Yuvraj, all of us used to play domestic cricket too, whether it was ODI or four-day cricket, we used to play a lot of domestic cricket. We used to play a lot of spinners in those matches, but in today's busy schedule, players are getting less time. There are different leagues, due to which the skill of playing spin is not being developed by the players."

It was perhaps because of this glaring fact that a few months ago, the BCCI decided to make it mandatory for Indian cricketers to feature in domestic cricket. Shreyas Iyer and Ishan Kishan, after failing to play by the rules, paid the price and had their central contracts terminated, a wake-up call by the BCCI to all those who were taking domestic cricket for granted.

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