Photo via Hindustan Times

With Varun Chakravarthy injured, pressure mounts on India’s secondary bowling options to deliver against Afghanistan

India secured a seven-wicket victory over Afghanistan in the opening T20I on Monday, but the triumph came with fresh selection headaches after spinner Varun Chakravarthy was sidelined for the rest of the series due to an injury. Varun, who values sticking to his tactical execution over mere outcome or dismissal counts, had delivered an economical four-over spell of 1/16 before being ruled out.

With Hardik Pandya already unavailable, India's auxiliary bowling attack showed clear vulnerabilities against an 83-run alliance between Azmatullah Omarzai and Mohammad Nabi that pushed the visitors past the 150-run mark. Nitish Kumar Reddy leaked 30 runs across two wicketless overs, while opening batter Abhishek Sharma contributed one over of off-spin that yielded eight runs.

Additional strain fell upon Shivam Dube, whom skipper Shreyas Iyer called upon to bowl the 20th over without prior time to assess pitch conditions, leading to 21 runs being scored off his single set of six. Iyer later acknowledged to television broadcasters that he had virtually no alternatives left in the decisive moment, though he backed Dube to review and address his shortcomings.