When India cricket team captain Shreyas Iyer unveiled the playing XI for the IRE vs IND 1st T20I at the toss on Friday, he mentioned that the team was going with two spinners, three seamers and one all-rounder. The two spinners were Axar Patel and Washington Sundar – although both are all-rounders. And clearly, for a person who was included in the line-up as a spinner, Sundar was underutilized by the captain, as it has so occurred with the Tamil Nadu cricketer multiple times in the past across formats.
Washington’s role in the IRE vs IND 1st T20I was confusing and baffling. He was used just for one over with the ball, that too at the back end of the innings. With the bat, he was used at number 6. If we look at how Sundar has been used with the ball over the last two years in T20Is, one thing becomes clear – his role in the setup is not clearly defined and the flexible approach of using him as a bowler as yielded lesser results for India.
To use or not to use Washington Sundar in T20Is
Let’s take a look at Sundar’s stats in T20Is with the ball from 2025 and 2026. After featuring in 12 T20Is in 2024 in which he picked up 16 wickets in 35 overs, the quota of overs allocated to the spinner decreased by a huge margin in the following years. In 2025, Washi played 6 T20Is in which he bowled just 7.2 overs, and picked up 4 wickets. In those six games, he bowled just 1 over in two matches, 1.2 in another, and just one full quota of 4 overs against South Africa in 2025.
Cut to 2026, he has featured in 3 T20Is – where he has bowled a combined of 7 overs and is yet to pick up a wicket this year. Talking about the number of overs he has bowled, he bowled 4 against Netherlands and 2 against South Africa in the T20 World Cup, followed by just a single over against Ireland in the IRE vs IND 1st T20I.
Going by what captain Iyer said at the toss, Sundar should have gotten more overs in the game. However, that was not the case. Understandably, pacers extracted more favour from the surface at Belfast, and therefore it made more sense for Shreyas to stick to using Dube, Rana, Arshdeep and Prasidh. However, there seems to be very little logic in having Sundar in the playing XI if he is going to be underutilized with the ball, given that India already possess a batting heavy line-up.
It is pertinent to point out that the usage of Sundar has been rather irregular, and it has happened not just in the Iyer era of captaincy but also when Suryakumar Yadav was at the helm of affairs. For a bowler who has 51 wickets from 61 T20Is, at an average of 24.17 and an career economy rate of 7.05, he surely deserves more overs.
Batting position isn’t exactly an issue, as Sundar has been used at the number 6 or 7 positions in T20Is for some time now, and he has gotten used to it. After all, he has scored majority of the runs while batting at number 6 (114 runs). Therefore, the Indian team management needs to evaluate and define Sundar’s role specifically in T20Is. Else, it is just one extra all-rounder occupying a spot in the playing XI.
