5 Indian spinners who faded away after promising starts

4. Piyush Chawla

Piyush Chawla is a two-time World Cup winner with India and thus it is rather baffling that the leg-spinner finds him in this list. Chawla rose into prominence quite early in his career by putting in some notable performances in junior cricket. He is a conventional wrist spinner who can play his part with the bat too.

Despite being in the radar of national selectors for a long time, Chawla never became a regular for the national team.

In a long career, which started back in 2006, Piyush Chawla played only three Test matches for India. He represented India in 25 One-Day Internationals too and picked up 32 wickets in those matches, with his best performances coming against Pakistan and Hong Kong in 2008.

There has never been a doubt regarding Piyush Chawla’s talent as a wrist spinner. He loves to flight the ball in the air and is able to turn the ball in dead pitches too.

However, the inconsistency in the line and length meant that he leaked many runs in the middle overs. Opposition batsmen often identified him as a weak spot and tried to accumulate as many runs as possible.

A classic example of this scenario was the World Cup match against England at Bangalore in 2007. Andrew Strauss found Chawla’s leg spin easy to counter and smashed him all around the park at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Chawla gave away 71 runs in his quota of ten overs, which led the team management to drop him for the subsequent matches.

However, Piyush Chawla has been a regular in the Indian Premier League. He has played for Kings XI Punjab but now represents Kolkata Knight Riders and is a trusted player of captain Gautam Gambhir.