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Almost without exception, teams visiting India talk about how this is the hardest place to play Test cricket in. About how India, in their own conditions, are practically invincible (it’s another matter that India play extremely well in all conditions now). About how the pitches and the heat and the crowds and the dazzling array of high-class spinners and gifted batters combine to make a potent, heady concoction.
Ben Stokes was the latest to join the chorus, England’s Test captain acknowledging that India were the ‘absolute best in home conditions, there’s no doubt about that. We understand and respect that as a team.’
As England should. Since losing a four-Test series 1-2 to England towards the end of 2012, India have embarked on a spectacular home run. In an 11-year stretch from the beginning of 2013, they have won 36 and lost just three of 46 Tests, triumphed in all 17 series. In that same period, Australia have lost three series at home (two to India) and England two. It just goes to show how difficult it is to best India in one game, let alone a series.
So, apart from the pitches, what are the factors that drive India to be such behemoths at home, we ask Stokes. “Being better at exploiting the home conditions,” he replies. “I think that’s it — you know they’ve got a quality spin attack, quality batsmen. That’s why they are so good.”
Stokes isn’t just talking up India and talking down his own side’s chances. He is being realistic without being fatalistic, because his England won’t go down without a fight. They will continue to keep their faith in ‘Bazball’, which is an overarching term to define their aggressive, gung-ho style of batsmanship which has been the legacy of the Stokes-Brendon McCullum management era. It’s a style that was born out of necessity. Before Stokes and McCullum came together in the middle of 2022, England had won just one of their last 17 Tests under Joe Root. That abysmal run meant not just a change in leadership but also a change in the brand of cricket they wanted to portray. Enter ‘Bazball’, equal parts run-orientated and entertainment, with reverse-sweeps and scoops and the cheeky and the unorthodox becoming commonplace in the English lexicon.
‘Bazball’ has paid rich dividend – under Stokes, England have triumphed in 13 of 19 Tests, including series sweeps in Pakistan and New Zealand. But its biggest test will come over the next seven weeks, on spin-friendly surfaces and against two of the finest spinners going in world cricket.
R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja are primarily responsible for India’s spectacular home record in the last several years. It’s not as if they have operated without support, but it’s to them that Rohit Sharma looks for wickets, just as Virat Kohli did before him. Neither man has disappointed; Ashwin is ten wickets shy of becoming only the second Indian after Anil Kumble to reach 500 Test scalps, Jadeja is more than the sum of his considerable parts with his mature left-handed batting and electric fielding complementing his incisive left-arm spin.
There are more strings to India’s bow than Ashwin and Jadeja – Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj is as good a new-ball pairing as any in the world and Rohit helms a vastly talented batting group that hasn’t always been allowed to express itself without inhibition in the last two years in home conditions by demanding surfaces designed to assist spin. But these two outstanding tweakers will loom as the central figures as the five-Test caravan lurches from Hyderabad to Dharamsala with pitstops in Visakhapatnam, Rajkot and Ranchi. Crafty and highly competitive, they grow fangs at home and it won’t be lost on them that they will have to be at the top of their game against an English batting group that has reiterated time and again in the last two years that any indiscretion will be dealt with ruthlessly, mercilessly and decisively.
For all of England’s creativity and notwithstanding the massive absence of Kohli for the first two games, India will quietly fancy their chances of extending their home hegemony. But as Rohit cautioned, they aren’t taking anything for granted. “At the end of the day, it’s sport and there’s a possibility that you can lose as well,” he pointed out. “I wouldn’t say we’re not beatable; if we don’t show up well, we are going to find ourselves in trouble. That’s not what we want.”
England, optimistic England, have been forewarned. With a bowling group that has hardly played in India, they must find a way to win because India are in no mood to lose.
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