Test Match: India's transition jigsaw - A work in progress

There is little to no shame in being 2-1 down to England, in their backyard, with two Tests to play. Behind the scenes, Brendon McCullum thinks like a chess player, even if the execution is occasionally ninja-style. Fronting up is Ben Stokes, who will put his body on the line, wearing blows when at the crease, or bowling himself into the dust because the situation warrants it. Around these two, England have built a unit that is formidable in conditions that abet their style of play.

And yet, India will be kicking themselves. For they have no real business being 2-1 down in this series. They lost a Test they shouldn’t have, picked a team for a draw and won and then seemed to get the balance right on the third try, dominated the opposition in a calculated manner for the most part, and still ended up losing.

This Indian team is in transition, it is well worth remembering. This is their first full series without Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, and R Ashwin, and these are giant boots to fill. Certainly, they are unfillable in the short term.

But, while it is impossible to have like-for-like replacements ready and waiting, especially as the elevation to doing the business in Test cricket is a mental one as much as it is about skills, India have found some answers. Shubman Gill is scoring the runs India is missing, and a combination of all-rounders is ensuring that there are enough wicket-taking options through the 90 overs available in a day.

What the team does appear to lack, though, is a vision or sense of direction that is integral to navigating any transitional phase. There will be wins and losses along the way, but a captain-coach combination that knows what its North Star is and chases it to the exclusion of all else is the only way to consistent growth.

Having a vision does not mean being inflexible or sticking with the same personnel irrespective of the conditions. You cannot blame India for chopping and changing. But you have to ask what the overarching blueprint for success is, and whether it has been articulated clearly enough to the wider group.

With India’s last two coach-captain combinations: first Ravi Shastri and Virat Kohli, and then Rahul Dravid and Rohit Sharma, it was clear that the pursuit of 20 wickets would supersede everything else. This may occasionally mean additional pressure on the top-order batsmen to deliver, with a longer tail in harness. But, as experts have pointed out, having a gun bowling attack that is looking for wickets at all times also results in the opposition making fewer runs, which takes a load off the batsmen.

India may not have five specialist bowlers they trust to pick up wickets in foreign conditions, or even four plus Ravindra Jadeja, but deploying all-rounders to do the job leaves too many loose ends, with each player’s role not being defined clearly enough. Add to this Gill’s tendency to rely on fast bowlers as his primary offensive tactic, and the role of the spinner itself is diminished, setting aside for a moment the loss of a slow bowler of Ashwin’s quality, control, guile and variation.

It could also be argued—as has been the case in these columns for some time—that India are playing Washington Sundar out of position. It’s not merely a case of him batting too low down the order to make full use of his talent, but of his very positioning as a bowler who brings batting to the table. There’s no reason why he should not bat at No 3 and still bring himself into play as an off spinner.

This leads to the obvious question of Karun Nair’s vulnerability. Karun forced his way back into the team with a ton of runs, but Sai Sudarshan is no slouch to come in at the top, should the team insist on sticking with Washington down the order.

India have given Karun a fair go, and he has not been an obvious failure, but the question the team has to ask is whether he fits into their best eleven, with a long-term view at least somewhere in the background. That answer will dictate whether Karun plays the final two Tests of this series or not.

The final day rearguard action during the third Test in Lord’s from the redoubtable Jadeja brought India to within 22 runs, but it should not be lost on anyone that the lower order did its thing in the first innings as India went from 376 for 6 to 387 all out.

If India took a step back and looked at how the Test went, they could be reasonably satisfied from a numerical perspective. They won more sessions than they lost. But in the moments that mattered, they faltered. When the game was evenly poised, ripe for the picking, India could not press home the advantage. This is not for lack of belief, but more likely a product of indecision and tentativeness stemming from the way forward not having found its way into the DNA of each and every player that makes up this unit.


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