New Test goals: What next for India?

Kolkata: For the first time in the history do India have a positive Test record, with its foundation firmly laid at home. Out of 179 wins so far, 119 came in India, 71 of which were registered since 2000. Throughout this phase, specifically from 2012—the last time India lost a home series, to England—a sweeping narrative has been woven around India’s home dominance. This remains Test cricket’s Final Frontier. And from the way Bangladesh were outclassed at Chennai, it looks like India’s spectacular home run won’t be threatened yet another season. What next though?

It’s a question that must goad India to find more definitive answers. Sustained home invincibility for more than two decades is no mean feat but there is also no denying the slipping quality of visiting teams. Not since 2010 have South Africa won a Test in India because they haven’t found worthy replacements of Hashim Amla and Jacques Kallis till date. England came calling earlier this year, hoping to dazzle India with their batting blitzkriegs but their bowling inexperience was ultimately found out. Australia have been the strongest visitors, but even their batting seems too heavily reliant on Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne.

With India not playing Pakistan anymore, Sri Lanka being a shadow of what they once were, and Bangladesh refusing to improve, Test cricket’s Asian context too has diminished to become a footnote. The biggest differentiating factor has been India’s consistency. Fast bowling benchmarks are touching unprecedented heights thanks to Jasprit Bumrah; Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja have been more than worthy successors of Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh; the batting may not have the lustre of the Fab Four but works nevertheless; and the leadership has found successive boosts in character in the form of Sourav Ganguly, MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.

It’s not surprising then for so many exceptional cricketers in successive generations to take world cricket by the scruff and stitch favourable results. With the home juggernaut more or less running on autopilot—37 out of India’s 56 wins in 2010s came in their backyard—India started casting their nets wider. Australia have been annexed twice in a row, with the current lot looking good enough to make it a hattrick later this year. The 2021 series in England was a belter and the 2-2 finish was probably a justified result. Earlier this year, South Africa too got a taste of new India after being forced to a 1-1 draw. Yet it hasn’t been enough to propel India to the league of Australia in the 2000s or the invincible West Indies team of the 1980s.

A major reason behind this is a perceptibly higher loss percentage that is negating India’s win-loss ratios since 2000 because not many games are being drawn with respect to wins. Case in point is the phase since 2010 where India have authored their most dominant run, winning 78 out of 147 Tests but also conceding 42 defeats. Now consider the Australia team between 1990 and 2009. Not only did they win 16 Tests in a row twice during that 20-year period, Australia also ended with 133 Test victories and only 43 defeats. West Indies are probably the only team to lose under 10 Tests (eight, in the 1980s) in an entire decade but more significant were those 31 draws that gave them a phenomenal 5.37 win-loss ratio that no team has bettered.

To be fair, these numbers highlight priorities of a different era of cricket when settling for draws instead of risking victories used to be the norm. Playing to save Tests probably isn’t a thing these days but the 2020-21 series—where Hanuma Vihari and Ashwin literally put their bodies on line to save the third Test in Sydney before the series was won in Gabba—was an unforgettable reminder of the virtues of a ‘live today, fight tomorrow’ approach. Look back and quite a few major tours could have gone the other way had India dug in at Leeds in 2021, or Centurion in 2018, or Christchurch in 2020. It’s either this or win more so that India don’t have to worry about the defeats, something Australia had achieved in the 2000s, losing and drawing 18 games each but obliterating those numbers with 79 wins. That would be something.