How aggressive batting led to India’s Test whitewash over Bangladesh

The World Test Championship, introduced by the International Cricket Council in 2019, is a marathon, a test of endurance and staying power, of consistency and adaptability.

It entails the nine participating teams to play six series – three at home, three away to ensure fairness – of at least two games each, with the top two nations with the best percentage points at the end of the league phase earning the right to play the final.

India have played both finals so far, against New Zealand in 2021 and Australia in 2023, reiterating that they are not paying mere lip service to the primacy of the five-day game. It’s another matter, though, that they ended up on the losing side in both those title clashes in England, well beaten by their antipodean rivals.

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Home advantage

Under Rohit Sharma, India are out to right the wrongs of the past, if one can put it so. Shattered after a spectacular run to the final of the 50-over home World Cup ended in bitter disappointment in Ahmedabad last November, they dug deep to regather focus and keep their tryst with the T20 World Cup in the Americans in June. It wasn’t quite redemption for the ODI World Cup heartbreak, but at least the long drought for an ICC trophy had ended.

Once that was out of the way, the focus returned to Test cricket. As they approached a busy season of five-day matches – ten, to be exact, between September 19 and January 7 – they knew that they had to maximise the five home games before travelling to Australia next month for their first five-match showdown Down Under for 33 years. Up against them first were Bangladesh, pesky opponents, for a two-match faceoff.

India approached the series having won 11 of 13 previous Tests against their neighbours, the two draws stemming from excessive interference from the elements. But there was something different about this Bangladesh side. In a break from norm, they had a cracking pace outfit to complement their wonderful assortment of top-class spinners. And their confidence was at an all-time high following their historic 2-0 sweep in Pakistan, a land where they had never won a Test previously.

Invincible run

Najmul Hossain Shanto’s men, however, understood that India were not Pakistan. That they wouldn’t blow hot and cold, that they weren’t Dr Jekyll one day and Mr Hyde the next. They knew they would have to play above themselves to stop the Indian juggernaut. They didn’t. They couldn’t. They weren’t allowed to.

India’s invincibility at home has been too well documented to bear elaborate repetition. Since the beginning of 2013 and before the start of this series, they had won 40 and lost just four Tests – two apiece to Australia and England. They had the spinners, of course, but they also had Jasprit Bumrah, easily the best all-format pacer – bowler, actually, not just pacer – going. They had the batters with weighty runs and splendid averages. They had the nous, the skill, the depth, the character, the hunger, the drive, the ambition. Truth to tell, Bangladesh never had a chance.

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They might have thought they did in Chennai in the first Test when, for the first time in 42 years, a visiting captain won the toss and put India in. Inside four hours, India were staring down the barrel at 144 for six. Bangladeshi pace was proving to be a handful in helpful conditions, India were down to their two spinning all-rounders and the tail. Series on the edge?

Rude wake-up call

Only for a brief while. In a seamless transference of pressure, India rocked Bangladesh through R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, the former batting as if against a bunch of schoolkids, the latter inconspicuously sailing in his wake. The hunter became the hunted, and once India amassed 376, there was only one team in the game. It was a rude wake-up call for Bangladesh. Test matches can be lost in four hours, but they certainly can’t be won in that time.

Ashwin, statistically Anil Kumble’s equivalent as India’s greatest match-winner, followed up a magical sixth Test hundred with a five-wicket haul in potentially his last Test in the city of his birth. As if India’s cup of joy wasn’t already overflowing, Rishabh Pant weighed in with a second-innings hundred in his first Test in 21 months, his first since a horrible road accident that threatened his life, let alone his career.

Sitting on a 1-0 lead, India went into Kanpur understandably apprehensive. Chepauk’s red-soil surface had encouraged swift passages of play. Green Park’s black soil would entail hard, back-breaking, often unrewarding labour. It was Bangladesh’s best chance of escaping with a draw, like New Zealand did in November 2021 at the same venue. Those chances mushroomed enormously after days two and three saw not a ball bowled even though there was no rain in a damning indictment of the lack of preparedness of one of India’s oldest Test grounds.

Show of aggression

Champion teams make their own luck, and that’s what Rohit’s bunch did on Monday. Once Bangladesh were bowled out for 233, some 40 minutes after lunch on day four, India took the bull by the horns. The skipper set the tone by charging down the track and smashing his first ball for a gigantic six. That rubbed off on his colleagues. In a mesmeric exhibition of unchecked ball-bashing, India scored the fastest team 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250 in Test history, rattling along at 8.22 runs an over while amassing 285 for 9 declared. That’s a rate perfectly acceptable on a surface of that nature even in T20 cricket. In Test cricket? Wow!

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Through that manic 34.4-over passage of play, India put the Test world on alert. It was a statement that will have shaken the rest of the field. It was electrifying; it’s debatable if Test cricket will be the same again.

Thanks to their brazen show of aggression and intent, India brought a soporific Test to life. Bangladesh had perhaps reconciled to a day and a half of the Indian grind, so their shock at being subjected to the hammering of their lives can be well imagined. So addled was their thinking that it reflected in their shot-selection in the second innings against a superb Indian attack. A dreary draw had given way to a seven-wicket rout, a 2-0 sweep, a consolidation of their position at the top of the WTC table. India aren’t just entertainers, they are winners too. Now, for another trophy to validate that status.