Ten Doeschate on IND No.3 position: ‘Whoever plays, they’ll be given bit of run’

2 min readJun 4, 2026 06:39 PM IST

India players practice ahead of their one-off Test match vs Afghanistan. (Express Photo | Kamleshwar Singh)

India’s assistant coach Ryan Ten Doeschate said that India’s No.3 spot has been passed on from player to player since Cheteshwar Pujara’s retirement and it was high time for them to stick with either Sai Sudharsan or Devdutt Padikkal in that role.

Since Pujara, Shubman Gill, Padikkal, Sudharsan, Karun Nair and Washington Sundar have all been tried in that position to middling effect. The current no.3 Sudharsan has played 6 tests in the No.3 position and has managed just an average of over 27.

“There’s been a lot of changes in that spot and that’s not ideal, you know. You need to look at the incumbents for that role and and maybe stick with someone. It’s a difficult position to bat in and a very important position to bat. Dev comes in with a ton of runs in domestic cricket across all the formats and obviously Sai’s been high on runs in IPL with Gujarat, so they’re both in good form,” Ten Doeschate said at a press conference on Thursday.

“Whoever plays they’ll be given a bit of a run. That’s quite difficult with one Test match now, and then we don’t play a Test match for another two months, and then we play two Test matches, and then you don’t play for a while. So, you know, we need to factor that in. The main point around there is we want to make a decision and then trust that person to grow into the role, and ideally quickly. Where we find ourselves in the WTC table? It’s probably something we could have done better leading up to this is maybe backing someone in a different spot,” he added.

The one-off India vs Afghanistan Test will be the first part of Afghanistan’s tour of India, with the match being followed by three ODIs. It will also be the first time that a Test match will be played in the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium in New Chandigarh.