Can India rediscover their batting swagger at home?
Since 2021, India’s batters have seen surprisingly poorer returns at home than in the previous five years. Here is a deep-dive into why that has happened
S Rajesh15-Sep-2024For several years now, defeating India in India is considered the toughest task in men’s Test cricket, a claim which is backed by numbers: since the start of 2013, India have a 40-4 win-loss record at home, easily the best; in second place is Australia’s 41-7.Over much of this period, India were extremely dominant with both bat and ball: from 2013 to 2020, when they had a stunning 28-1 win-loss home record, India averaged 44.05 runs per wicket with the bat, and 23.30 with the ball. Both were the best among all teams at home. In this period, the only year when the India batters averaged under 40 at home in a calendar year was in 2015, when they scored only 25.27 runs per wicket on dubious pitches in the four-Test series against South Africa. (These batting averages exclude runs scored from extras, while bowling averages include bowler wickets only.)ESPNcricinfo LtdSince 2021, though, that trend has changed a bit. In 17 home Tests in these four years, India’s batting average has dropped to 33.40 from the highs of 48 between 2016 and 2020 (actually 2019, since there was no Test cricket in India in 2020). In terms of rank, India have slipped from first to fifth. The bowlers held their end of the bargain though, averaging 21.29 runs per wicket, which is next only to South Africa’s 18.84 among all teams in their home conditions. India’s 12-3 win-loss record in this period points to a team which is still dominant, though not overwhelming so like they were earlier.The lower batting and bowling averages for India also point to another trend, of conditions getting tougher for batters in general in the country. How much more difficult is batting in India in these last four years, compared to an earlier similar period? Let the numbers provide the answer. We’ll look at the top-seven batters only, in the periods 2016-20, and since 2021.
The overall numbers in India – for both home and away top seven batters – show a significant drop, from 39.18 in the first period, to 31.65 since 2021. (This only includes Tests which involved India, and excludes the couple of matches where India was a neutral venue.) Between 2016 and 2020, the average in India was the highest among teams which hosted at least 10 Tests, with Australia coming in next at 38.3. (Pakistan hosted only three Tests in this period.) Since 2021, the overall average has dropped to seventh out of nine countries; only in the West Indies and South Africa do the top-seven batters have a lower average.The decline of these averages in India has largely been triggered by the home batters. Overseas batters have found the Indian pitches and the SG ball a tricky combination for a while now, but their averages have dropped only marginally – from 28.51 to 26.12 – in these two periods. For India’s top seven, on the other hand, the fall has been steep – from 54.43 to 38.30.ESPNcricinfo LtdIt’s true that all teams haven’t toured India since 2021: there have been a couple of series against England, but apart from that, the other tourists have been Australia, Sri Lanka and New Zealand. In the period between 2016 and 2020, the touring teams were New Zealand, England, Bangladesh (twice), Australia, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, West Indies and South Africa. The spread is wider, but the difference in averages for overseas batters is relatively small – there is only an 8% dip since 2021 compared to the 2016-20 period. For India’s batters, though, the drop is a whopping 29.6%, and a fall of five places from first to sixth, in terms of batting averages at home for the top seven of each team.In these four years, while India have still been winning fairly consistently, the batters haven’t exploited home advantage like they used to earlier: the top seven have averaged 38.3 at home and 34.78 abroad, a difference of just 3.52. Among the top nine teams, only two have a smaller difference – West Indies and Bangladesh. In the four preceding years, the difference was 19.53, the highest among all teams. That was largely due to an extremely high home average of 54.43, but their away average of 34.90 was also the highest during this period.
Much of this dip in numbers is because of a huge slump in form for batters who were the mainstays of India’s middle order. From 10 hundreds in 22 Tests at an average of 86.17, Virat Kohli’s returns have dropped to a solitary century in 11 matches, and an average of 34.47. Similarly, Cheteshwar Pujara’s average dropped from 56.85 to 24.53, a fall of almost 57%. Rohit Sharma has scored four hundreds in 15 Tests since 2021, but even he has averaged a shade under 45, compared to 101.1 in the 2016-20 period.ESPNcricinfo LtdThe only batter with stunning home numbers during the last four years is Yashasvi Jaiswal. He has two double-hundreds in a career which is just five-home-Tests old, but none of the others have similarly stamped their authority. Shubman Gill has shown similar signs, though, with three hundreds and a 50-plus average in his last seven home Tests, against Australia and England. Overall, the frequency of innings per century for India’s top seven has dropped from one every 6.9 innings to one every 13.1 innings.How have the numbers for India’s batters dropped so significantly in the last four years? The pace-spin split helps explain this. Between 2016 and 2020, India’s top-seven batters averaged 47.36 against seamers, and 63.36 against spinners. Since 2021, the average against pace has remained almost the same, but against spin it has fallen by almost 41%, to 37.56. The distribution of wickets has become lopsided too – from a nearly 50% split in the 2016-20 period, the opposition spinners have taken 75% of India’s wickets (of the top seven) in the last four years.ESPNcricinfo LtdThe averages for batters versus spin in each period further illustrates the huge contrast in the two periods. Among the batters who played a reasonable number of innings in both periods, the decline is again most apparent for Kohli and Pujara. Kohli scored 1342 runs for 13 dismissals against spin in the 2016-20 period, but since 2021 he has been dismissed by spinners 15 times for only 454 runs. Similarly, Pujara scored 1128 runs for his 13 spin dismissals between 2016-20, but since then managed only 277 for his next 12 dismissals. Apart from those two, there are also some dire numbers for Rajat Patidar and KL Rahul, while Shreyas Iyer’s stats here don’t support his reputation of being an excellent player of spin. In fact, the allrounders Axar Patel and Ravindra Jadeja have better stats against spin than many of the specialist batters. Between 2016 and 2020, all the major batters except Ajinkya Rahane averaged at least 48 against spin.
Since 2021, 11 overseas spinners have taken eight or more wickets in India, of whom four average under 30, and eight under 36. Between 2016 and 2020, five of the eight spinners who took more than five wickets in India conceded more than 48 runs per wicket.
Even with these improved numbers, the opposition batters haven’t out-batted India’s, in terms of their numbers against spin. The gap between them has narrowed, though: from being more than twice as good as the opposition, the India batters are merely about one-and-a-half times as good. In terms of absolute difference in averages against spin, for the top-seven batters it has dropped significantly from 33.35 to 13.51. However, R Ashwin, Jadeja, Axar and Kuldeep Yadav have been much better than the opposition spinners, and this difference is still enough for it to be decisive in most games.For opposition spinners, though, India is no longer the team against whom they have the worst average, like they did in the 2016-20 period; that honour now belongs to Australia, against whom spinners average 38.06. Against India, they average 35.50, which is a big improvement from the 49.86 they averaged in the earlier five-year period.
The recent batting numbers at home have been a bit worrying for India, but there is cause for optimism in the form displayed by the two players who are expected to be the flagbearers of India’s batting for the next several years. In the series against England earlier this year, Jaiswal slammed two double-hundreds and averaged 89, while Gill topped 450 runs and averaged over 56. Those are much better returns than what Pujara and Rahane managed in their last few Tests at home.Going into the home season of five Tests, India will want more from their batters than what they have delivered recently. If Kohli finds his groove again, there is every chance that the quartet of Rohit, Jaiswal, Gill and Kohli, with generous assistance from Axar Patel and Jadeja, will help India regain their home batting dominance.