“They need to bowl us out. For us, that will be the win-win situation – if we can bat out the full day tomorrow. For us, it’ll be as good as a winning situation.”
This would not be an uncommon statement from any representative of a visiting team that came to India between 2013 and 2023. Securing a draw – while losing a series 0-1 – would imply that they were defeated, but not disgraced, on what was considered the toughest assignment in Test cricket.
But the above words were uttered by Ravindra Jadeja, one of the key factors in India’s long and proud home record in the longest format of the game, after the fourth day of the second Test against South Africa. India had lost the first match, and the best they could have hoped for was the scoreline to remain the same.
It must be noted that English is not Jadeja’s first language, but describing a notional 0-1 home series defeat – as things turned out, it became 0-2 halfway through the fifth day – as a “win-win situation” means Indian cricket may have to make peace with a ‘new normal’, at least for the near future.
It’s all the more ironic coming from Jadeja who has made no secret of last year’s 0-3 home debacle against New Zealand being one of the biggest disappointments of his career. But there’s no hiding from the fact that India is no longer an insurmountable challenge for resourceful, well-prepared and well-drilled visiting teams.
A lot was made of the 2-2 series draw in England earlier this year, with the argument floated that the transition after the retirement of some veteran stalwarts was complete. But the fine print was conveniently glossed over.
India were one big hit away from losing the series – 1-3 probably – and pitches and the largely lacklustre English bowling attack didn’t pose the sturdiest obstacle as their selectors were keener to get their big guns ready for The Ashes.
The West Indies were not expected to be the toughest opponents, but if the Indian think tank believed they just needed to turn up at home against the World Test Champions, they had not learnt their lessons from a year ago.
Surface tension
When India was a formidable team at home for most of the decade gone by, the quality of personnel at disposal in both batting and bowling – pace and spin – meant they could dominate teams irrespective of the nature of pitches.
But now the biggest concern seems to be which surface would help the home team most, or more pertinently, which one would disadvantage the visitors most. That hasn’t worked because the current Indian batting line-up can’t be guaranteed to flourish on either seam-friendly or spin-favouring tracks. And the bowlers, especially finger-spinners, have lost the temperament and skill to dismiss good batsmen cheaply on flat pitches.
Hence, the lack of continuity in this regard. A narrow defeat on an underprepared wicket in Kolkata was all it took to change course and go for a traditional Indian wicket in Guwahati. The only thing that remained unchanged was the result of the game.
Overseas tweakers, who have to largely ply their trade on unresponsive surfaces back home, have to develop the traits of flight, dip, accuracy, drift, spin and variations, and out-bowl their counterparts in India, whatever the conditions. So, in a way, the best-case scenario for India is a flat pitch while batting, and one that does all sorts when they are bowling.
That puts a lot of emphasis on the toss, and there have been voices putting part of the blame for India’s recent troubles on the coin flip. True, the hosts lost four of the five tosses against New Zealand and South Africa, and in the one instance they did win – against the Kiwis in Bengaluru – they chose to bat in seamer-friendly conditions, getting bowled out for 46.
It put the team under pressure in a relatively short series, prompting them to revert to their default mode of preparing turners, which played into the hands of the opposition, who kept winning tosses. An argument can be made that India was a victim of the perfect storm.
Control the controllables
But questions need to be asked. Are India giving themselves the best chance to flourish at home? Test cricket remains a specialist’s format, and an all-rounder is one who can command a place in the team on the sole basis of either skill (Jacques Kallis, Ian Botham, Ben Stokes, Imran Khan; Jadeja, of late). In the case of the present Indian team, it seems they prefer to go for quantity to tide over the lack of quality.
In the Guwahati Test, apart from the openers and the No.3, there was no one who could be termed a specialist batsman. Dhruv Jurel may show potential, but is far from being a finished article yet. Having a lot of batting and bowling depth is desirable, but as recent events have shown, that’s in name only. Batting for long periods of time against quality bowlers and setting up top-notch batsmen is a state of mind and is done best by those who have been doing it for years.
Nitish Kumar Reddy bats at No.8 and bowls a handful of overs, and it’s clear he’s not considered a frontline performer in either facet. Similarly, Axar Patel, the fourth spinner in Kolkata, was under-bowled and his primary role seemed to be getting some crucial runs down the order. Such assets are called utility players – they try their best not to let the team down, but get caught out somewhere.
Head coach Gautam Gambhir will forever be associated with the twin debacles at home. One has to go back more than four decades for the last instance of India losing a home series two years in a row. But this is also a fact that there are hardly any players in domestic cricket breaking the selectors’ door down, demanding to be picked in Tests. For all the platitudes about putting the longest format on a pedestal, the next several months will witness a surfeit of what-ball cricket.
Teams hoping to qualify for the World Test Championship (WTC) final – that’s one peak India has yet to conquer – build their campaign around near-invincibility at home. India are already behind the eight ball. When they return to the whites in Sri Lanka in the second half of 2026, they need to have most of their issues sorted, otherwise another WTC cycle would have passed them by and they will be under pressure again when the Aussies come calling in early 2027.
