India vs New Zealand | Farcical Indian show doesn’t augur well ahead of Australia tour

The Indian home season of great hope, which began with a bang in Chennai a month and a half ago, devolved into a whimper at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium, puncturing gaping holes in a proud record that has now been shredded to bits.

For a dozen years and 18 series, India were unstoppable at home. Except Pakistan of the established Test-playing nations, everyone arrived here with optimism, if not conviction, and returned home with their tails between their legs, punished for the occasional impunity such as winning an isolated Test with a walloping for the ages.

Between the 1-2 loss to England under Mahendra Singh Dhoni in December 2012 and now, India were the most feared outfit in their own backyard, the aura around them magnified by the embarrassment of batting riches and a crack spin combine in R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, with a few support acts thrown in, that seldom disappointed.

Also read: New Zealand create history, whitewash India 3-0 in Mumbai

Home truths laid bare

Now, that bubble of invincibility has burst resoundingly. Several home truths have been laid bare, not least the hype surrounding the felicity of India’s batters against the turning ball.

India is the acknowledged land of spin – not just for producing an assembly line of high-quality spinners, but also the dexterous wrists, wonderful hands and nimble feet that allowed the likes in the past of Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Vishwanath, and in the more modern era of Mohammed Azharuddin, Navjot Sidhu, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and current head coach Gautam Gambhir, to make mincemeat of opposition spinners. Such champions as Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan at their pomp have been brought to their knees here.

And now we have Mitchell Santner and Ajaz Patel -- good spinners, make no mistake, but with no disrespect, hardly the most threatening -- running rings around the likes of Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli.

The modern-day Indian batter’s technique against the turning ball has steadily been on the decline, perhaps because he doesn’t play enough domestic cricket, perhaps because he doesn’t trust his defence, perhaps because he has been bitten so much by the T20 bug that he is now unable to make the switch from slam-bang to dead-bat.

Ominous signs

The signs have been ominous for a while now, especially on pitches that have made journeymen tweakers from other countries appear like wizards. But nowhere has the proclivity for self-destruction been more evident than in Pune and Mumbai over the last two weeks when Santner and Ajaz respectively lured them to their doom with a simplicity that was both admirable and unremarkable.

Also read: WTC table: India lose top spot after 3-0 loss to NZ

Gambhir has spoken repeatedly of batters trusting their defence, but how does one do that when hard hands come into play? When jabs and hoicks replace gentle nudges and meeting the ball late, with wrists supple enough to drop the ball at the batter’s feet? When the faith, misplaced as many would say, is transferred towards sweeps and paddles and reverses instead of playing in the ‘V’, cutting out the risks, opting for the percentages? When occupation of the crease is held directly proportional to the number of runs made? Where has the art of stonewalling gone? Of tiring the bowlers and manipulating fields, of frustrating the opposition and driving them to mistakes? Why is patience at such a premium?

These are questions to which there are no readymade, instant, acceptable answers. Commitment to Test cricket must not come from the lip alone. Test runs can’t be scored only in perfect batting conditions. There is a certain joy, a certain satisfaction, from scoring tough runs. From battling the elements and close-in catchers, from conquering the demons in the pitch and the gremlins in one’s one mind. Shubman Gill termed his 90 in the first innings of the Mumbai Test as one of his more enjoyable knocks for the attrition it demanded. That’s what difficult runs in Test cricket mean.

Rude wake-up call

Far too often in the last two Tests – the Bengaluru defeat was an aberration, no matter what followed, after a terrible error of judgement from Rohit exposed India’s batters to near-unplayable conditions exploited beautifully by the Kiwi quicks – India’s young batters and their captain have tried to hit their way out of trouble. Kohli, the one-time batting megastar, operated from poor memory, the paralysis of his mind reflected in his selection of shots, in his fidgety presence in the middle. India, and their fans, have been extremely kind to Kohli during a prolonged lean patch. It is incumbent upon the former captain to start repaying the faith before it is too late.

On its own, this 3-0 hammering is a reality check, a rude wake-up call. Not only have India lost their first home series in 12 years, they have also been whitewashed in a series of more than two Tests in their backyard for the first time ever. Not that there is a good time for any of this to eventuate, but the timing couldn’t have been worse. In a week’s time, India will depart in two batches to Australia for a long summer of cricket involving five Tests. They must win the series 4-0 or better to secure their berth in the final of the World Test Championship for a third successive time, a tall order when all other things are equal but practically impossible given the state of India’s batting and, certainly by extension, their mindset.

Also read: Losing Test series 0-3 at home 'very low point of my career': Rohit Sharma

Tough road ahead

From all indications, Rohit will miss the first of those Tests, starting in Perth on November 22, which means Jasprit Bumrah will helm the team for only the second time. Bumrah missed the Mumbai meltdown – India were shot out for 121 on Sunday, chasing 147 for victory – with a viral illness and oversaw a terrible loss in Birmingham in July 2022 (England chased down a fourth-innings target of 378 for the loss of just three wickets, scoring at 4.93 runs per over) in his only previous outing as Test skipper. He has a job on his hands, and so will Rohit when he rejoins the team, hopefully for the second Test.

India might yet turn things around and salvage something from Australia, given how vastly different the conditions there will be. It’s no secret that Australia is a great batting country once you get past the new ball because an older Kookaburra doesn’t do a lot, but as sound as that theory is, the practicality is a lot different. For India, the trick is to forget this as a bad dream, imbibe the lessons and make a fresh start. However arduous that might appear.