This was meant to be the year that defined Virat Kohli’s captaincy and India’s cricket.
But what it has done so far is brought us more of the same. Indian cricket always takes one step forward and many steps back.
We have lost a Test series in both South Africa and England, this despite being in the running for all of the Tests in both countries. It all simply boils down to poor planning, lack of detailing and of course stubborn thinking on the part of the think-tank.
Multiple Issues
Selection of the playing XI is too often being dictated by personal likes, dislikes and a strange sense of belief in a certain set of players, despite consistent failures. The odd victory seems to lull the team and its think-tank into a sense of self-belief. In many ways we represent the English team of the 1990s, who won an odd Test away from home, but never quite delivered the knockout punch to win series consistently.
This is now the third successive time India has lost a Test series in England starting from the horrific whitewash in 2011, followed by the pathetic surrender in 2014 and this capitulation in 2018.
All of it clearly shows that we have clearly not learnt our lessons from the previous tours.
And what is that down to? Lack of planning, understanding of the situations and lack of growth in some of the players.
Four years ago it was Moeen Ali who spun a web around India, before and after that, he had done precious little with the ball. Now in 2018, four years later, he was brought back from the wilderness more for his batting and he managed to create the same magic around the Indian batsmen. What it does show that this generation of batsmen, who were also on the previous tour have not learnt their lessons well.
Dhawan is Done
It is definitely therefore time to bid goodbye to few of the cricketers, especially when it comes to their Test careers.
Top of that list is definitely Shikhar Dhawan, who is very lucky to have been picked for the tour in the first place. Dhawan surely has had many failures away from home, but he simply manages to cash in on his white ball performances and gets himself a place in the Test XI.
His Test career has not flowered since his awesome debut hundred against Australia in 2013. During this tour as well, he’s scored just 158 runs in six innings against England.
Five years is a long time in a cricketing span and we have to move on beyond Dhawan to some of the younger players like Prithvi Shaw. Just like Murali Vijay, who has been discarded for good, it is time for Dhawan to go from red ball cricket too.
No All-round Hope
Similarly, it is inherently wrong to place all our seam bowling all-rounder hopes in one man, Hardik Pandya. He is still a work-in-progress and there is need to find other options. There has to be a sense of competition for Pandya to want to fight for his place with performances. England are lucky because they have a number of all-rounders including Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes, Sam Curran and Chris Woakes who do more than one thing on the field. India has been unlucky in having just one, whereas England had nearly four.
That’s been the difference.
With both Pandya and Ravichandran Ashwin not delivering with the bat and ball, the series was lost quite easily. Especially at Edgbaston for example, Pandya had a golden opportunity to shepherd the tail and take India home, but he was content playing safe.
It is therefore time to look to other candidates, put pressure on Pandya in the interim. There is no unwritten rule as yet on having just one seam bowling all-rounder in the playing XI or in the squad.
Missing Link
The one man who could have been handy in the role of a second all-rounder was Bhuvneshwar Kumar. He is in fact more of an investment with the bat and ball than Pandya.
Kumar is a handy batsman who could have proved very useful lower down the order, alongside a Ravindra Jadeja. Unfortunately in the case of Kumar, someone mismanaged his workload and Jadeja is strangely now required just to relieve some players during the passage of play.
Admit the Problem
Listening to captain Virat Kohli after the Test, an impression was gained that he is looking at the glass as half-full rather than half-empty.
That clearly means he is not acknowledging the problem at hand. While we look for short-term band-aid solutions to our woes, there is a need for long-term vision too. There is no attention being paid to that. Are we happy living with the tag of poor travellers forever? We cannot hide behind the fact that most sides are struggling away from home. That is a defeatist attitude and does not serve any purpose whatsoever.
Time for Shastri to Give Up Test Job
There needs to be a long-term plan to solve this riddle. For that what you need is a dedicated coach for the Test squad who is divorced from the glamour of white ball cricket and whose only remit is planning, plotting to do well away from home in the longer versions. This job is certainly not for someone like Ravi Shastri who is anyway not someone who is good at detailing. What you need is a nuts and bolts man who can plan to the final detail. Someone like a John Wright spent hours during his India coaching job, watching, looking and observing talent in domestic cricket. Wright was the brains behind the outward aggression of skipper Sourav Ganguly, along with vice-captain Rahul Dravid.
India needs to recreate that kind of balance to achieve the successes that the era of 2000s managed albeit in a small way.
India therefore needs a coach just for the Test squad who is not heard or seen but who is doing his job in the background. New Zealand’s recent coach Mike Hesson is just the man for the role.
Hesson managed a lot with a limited talent pool in New Zealand. Imagine him handling a vast reservoir like India. But this kind of thought only comes out of a vision.
Long-term Vision?
We need to ask ourselves if we really have the appetite and the need to be the best Test team in the world in all conditions. Indian cricket needs to undo 86 years of legacy and that will certainly take a lot of hard work. The question is anyone really interested in putting in that kind of hard work?
Remember we may be 1.25 billion Indians, but around 500 million from the cricketing world are happy to see us fail every time, especially in Test cricket. We can continue to be the butt of all jokes, or be happy to wallow in mediocrity forever.
(Chandresh Narayanan is former cricket writer with The Times of India, The Indian Express, ex-Media Officer for ICC and current media manager of Delhi Daredevils. He is also the author of World Cup Heroes, Cricket Editorial consultant, professor and cricket TV commentator.)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)