Ryan Ten Doeschate underlined Team India’s challenges of playing against spin in the recent tour of Sri Lanka.

The Dutchman pointed out that one of the major reasons that the Indian batters have struggled against spin is due to their focus on playing quality fast bowling attack.

During the tour of Sri Lanka, where India crumbled to 0-2 in the three-match series, the visitors lost 27 of their 30 wickets to spinners while chasing targets between 230-250 runs.

“The Indian mindset has become so driven to do well overseas that the focus has moved away from what was once their strength – playing spin,” Ten Doeschate said in an interview with TalkSport Cricket. “I guess one of the challenges that I wasn’t expecting and kind of overlooked is the playing of spin.” he added.

“We were undone in Sri Lanka, and I think the mindset of the Indians has been so driven to do well overseas. I think the focus has moved to doing well in Australia and doing well in England, and we’ve kind of let playing spin, which was always the strength of the Indian team, fall back a little bit. So that’s one thing I’m looking forward to, helping get to that position where Indians are the best players of spin in the world again,” he said.

Team India is devoid of a batting coach with Abhishek Nayar joining the ranks as the other assistant coach. In this situation, Ten Doeschate said that the focus is to work on the mentality of the players rather than tweaking their respective techniques.

“I don’t think much of what we’re going to bring is technical knowledge to these guys. It’s more about mindsets, situational awareness, how we think they can control certain phases of the game. It’s about throwing ideas out there, de-briefing, and keeping the mental space really good. That’s going to be really important,” the Dutchman said.