Test India 2013-Now: The Greatest Home Team of All Time?

[corbies]

With the current series against Australia they're well on their way to winning their 16th consecutive home series in a row. The most home series wins in a row before that was 10 by the Australian teams of 1994-2000 and 2004-2008.

As pointed out in this piece by Jarrod Kimber, the combination of India perfecting their pitch preparation around 2010 from being mostly batting friendly to being mostly extremely spin friendly along with the mastery of Jadeja and Ashwin on said pitches has combined to make them an essentially unstoppable force in India.

You should not bat in India

And it has been that way for quite some time.

wickets.substack.com

So I ask the question, has there been a better team playing at home than this India team?

Will a team even be able to draw a series in India before Ashwin or Jadeja retire? Do we appreciate enough how good these 2 in particular are in India?

 

[akkaps]

 

[PhatBoy]

I think the fact that Pakistan and Sri Lanka’s best chances of knocking them over have passed them by makes a 20-30-40 year unbeaten streak very likely.

The Pakistan side anchored by peak Younus and Yousuf, or Younus, Misbah and an emerging Babar, had just in those 3, guys who are good enough against spin to have at least given their team a foothold. Whether Yasir Shah and the spinners who played around him would have been good enough to trouble India is anyone’s guess though I suspect given the likes of Lyon have troubled them, Yasir probably could have.

Sri Lanka went close a few times with their golden era when the pitches were more batter friendly. Again, Mahela and Sanga and the support cast were probably good enough against class spin (Mahela is seriously underrated of the modern players in that regard) could have pushed them and a spin attack led by Murali and Herath on these pitches - wow, that would have made for a classic showdown.

But you could say that about any eras really; ‘they would have given them a run.’

I suspect something completely out of the box like England’s current tactics would be needed to even ruffle their feathers at the moment.

 

[Trojan90]

Would need a strong Australia/England (eg. England 2009/2012) or a golden period from one of the other countries (eg. recent NZ), ideally SL/PAK to overlap with a mini Indian rebuild to stand a chance. Not going to happen while Ashwin/Jadeja are still going strong.

 

[PhatBoy]

They are always going to cop s**t about pitches and yeah I get that but all in all they’re just fairly straightforward Indian conditions, the only dynamic that seems to have changed is that they’ve shifted from favouring Indian batsmen to favouring Indian bowlers.

The way they play has completely shifted and that’s exemplified by Shami whose home record for an Indian fast bowler is, well, utterly incredible. It’s tantamount to a SA spinner averaging 23-24.

The arrogance they play with - that whole ‘no matter what situation you get us into, we will find a way to get out of it’ is very reminiscent of the great Australian and WI sides. I don’t think they’re on a par with them obviously but gee it’s changed the way they operate as a cricket side

 

[Kappa]

No doubt they're extremely good on home conditions. The fact that the conditions are so extremely alien to foreign teams, and they deliberately do not give foreign teams a chance to practice on those conditions, gives their record a massive Asterix.

It's like a new game coming out but u already practiced for 3 weeks on the beta and ur playing who friend who is playing it for the first time.

 

[PhatBoy]

No doubt they're extremely good on home conditions. The fact that the conditions are so extremely alien to foreign teams, and they deliberately do not give foreign teams a chance to practice on those conditions, gives their record a massive Asterix.

It's like a new game coming out but u already practiced for 3 weeks on the beta and ur playing who friend who is playing it for the first time.

Do we actually have any confirmation of them denying visiting teams practice matches?

I don’t know what is stopping Australia from organising either actual tests or scratch matches in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka to help prepare anyway.

 

[melanChronic]

Undoubtedly the surfaces have changed in the last decade. Once upon a time you'd get the occasional dustbowl (just like you get a greentop like the Gabba every now and then here) but now they are a given for most matches. The stats that Kimber was touting about batting averages in India plummeting agree with that as well.

Question is, have the changes come because they have 2 of their greatest ever spinners operating at the moment, or are they just statistically the best spinners they've had because the conditions have catered to them in an unprecedented way? It will be interesting to see if new gun Indian spinners dominate once Ashwin and Jadeja retire.

 

[Kappa]

Do we actually have any confirmation of them denying visiting teams practice matches?

I don’t know what is stopping Australia from organising either actual tests or scratch matches in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka to help prepare anyway.

They don't deny practice matches, they just ensure that for those practice matches the pitches are NOTHING like what the test pitch will be. It's a deliberate ploy.

 

[Around the Wicket]

Undoubtedly the surfaces have changed in the last decade. Once upon a time you'd get the occasional dustbowl (just like you get a greentop like the Gabba every now and then here) but now they are a given for most matches. The stats that Kimber was touting about batting averages in India plummeting agree with that as well.

Question is, have the changes come because they have 2 of their greatest ever spinners operating at the moment, or are they just statistically the best spinners they've had because the conditions have catered to them in an unprecedented way? It will be interesting to see if new gun Indian spinners dominate once Ashwin and Jadeja retire.

Your right and the answer is why we no longer see batsmen friendly pitches is Tendulkar has retired.

India's main concern 10-15 years ago was there batsmen scoring runs, now there honestly tanking there batsmen stats but they don't seem to mind now.. If they done this in Tendulkar's era all s**t would be let loose.

 

[Around the Wicket]

A good pitch in India would be both sides scoring first innings and then become hard to bat on Days 4 and 5, atm every Test its hard to bat on from ball 1.

Look at some of the scorecards in Tendulkars era.. 500, sometimes even 600+ were the scores in the 1st innings and those games were still getting a result on Day 5, batting become hard on Day 4 and 5.

 

[PhatBoy]

Your right and the answer is why we no longer see batsmen friendly pitches is Tendulkar has retired.

India's main concern 10-15 years ago was there batsmen scoring runs, now there honestly tanking there batsmen stats but they don't seem to mind now.. If they done this in Tendulkar's era all s**t would be let loose.

Thats a fairly tinfoil explanation. Tendulkar while not perhaps the God most Indians make him out to be, did not need help.
there’s not a single hole in his record - he averaged over 50 in both Australia and England, and over 60 in South Africa. He averaged over 50 in India and over 60 in Sri Lanka, his entire career coinciding with Murali and some absolute rank turners.

The pitches ARE better for bowling there’s no doubt about that, but their batting quality in general has taken a dive. Sharma has proven for a while now that good batsmen and players of spin will still score there.
Pujara averages 53 in India and has played 97 of his tests in the last decade.

From the outside it would seem as though India realised finally that two things had to happen to succeed in countries where they were used to failing. One was that their batsmen needed to match the output of the previous generation - the likes of Sachin, Sehwag, Laxman and Dravid were what made them competitive overseas. Ensuring that the next crop didn’t just grow fat on flat decks and then get smoked overseas would have been pretty vital.
The second was improving their bowling and not just picking token quicks at home and expecting them to go overseas and win them test matches. Fostering their bowling on spinner friendly pitches, finding reverse swing, getting the most out of the ball while it is new etc.

And it’s worked

 

[Gethelred]

Thats a fairly tinfoil explanation. Tendulkar while not perhaps the God most Indians make him out to be, did not need help.
there’s not a single hole in his record - he averaged over 50 in both Australia and England, and over 60 in South Africa. He averaged over 50 in India and over 60 in Sri Lanka, his entire career coinciding with Murali and some absolute rank turners.

The pitches ARE better for bowling there’s no doubt about that, but their batting quality in general has taken a dive. Sharma has proven for a while now that good batsmen and players of spin will still score there.
Pujara averages 53 in India and has played 97 of his tests in the last decade.

From the outside it would seem as though India realised finally that two things had to happen to succeed in countries where they were used to failing. One was that their batsmen needed to match the output of the previous generation - the likes of Sachin, Sehwag, Laxman and Dravid were what made them competitive overseas. Ensuring that the next crop didn’t just grow fat on flat decks and then get smoked overseas would have been pretty vital.
The second was improving their bowling and not just picking token quicks at home and expecting them to go overseas and win them test matches. Fostering their bowling on spinner friendly pitches, finding reverse swing, getting the most out of the ball while it is new etc.

And it’s worked

I think there's also a recognition in the coaching ranks of what makes India unique as far as nations go, and how to use that most effectively.

I think - and I'd be interested to see statistics to disprove/prove this - India use India A better than every other nation, and they use their sheer breadth of different talent and different development styles - between cities, classes - to cultivate unique talent that plays in a unique way to a top level. The political games still take place, but they're reduced to 'we want to win' over 'I want to be first'; in another era, Umesh Yadav would've played every test available because a coach/someone in the establishment favoured him over Bumrah/Shami.

The rise of the IPL has also seen IPL teams and Ranji shield players exposed to international methods and stars and training standards. Coaches learn, grow better via proximity to the talent available. I also think it's no real surprise that both Jadeja and Ashwin are both excellent test bowlers and excellent short form players, especially on the subcontinent; their T20 competition feeds their test side's dominance, has let their bowlers grow incredibly familiar with each particular venue ahead of playing tests, let their groundskeepers experiment with different surfaces and teams/coaches with different methods and combinations.

I genuinely do not think the world will catch them for more than a few years at a time now, unless the advantage the IPL grants them is negated by something else.

 

[Rabish Binney]

Thoughts on the following - the current pommie Bazball side vs current Indian side in India.

What would be the outcome?

Would this Bazball approach work?

 

[Around the Wicket]

Tendulkar while not perhaps the God most Indians make him out to be, did not need help.

True but if you think the Indian curators didn't help him out your kidding yourself.

 

[PhatBoy]

True but if you think the Indian curators didn't help him out your kidding yourself.

I don’t think it was to help Tendulkar.
I think it was to help their team.

 

[Gethelred]

Thoughts on the following - the current pommie Bazball side vs current Indian side in India.

What would be the outcome?

Would this Bazball approach work?

5 test series? 4-0, with the second test drawn.

Juicy decks, Jack Leech and Dom Bess aren't taking 15 wickets in a test and James Anderson can't bowl infinity overs to take wickets without breaking down. More to the point, you can't bat that way on the sort of decks they've rolled out against us in this series and against them in 2013.

Joe Root took 5/8 in a game they selected 3 quicks and Leech in, and the test was over in 2 days.

 

[PhatBoy]

5 test series? 4-0, with the second test drawn.

Juicy decks, Jack Leech and Dom Bess aren't taking 15 wickets in a test and James Anderson can't bowl infinity overs to take wickets without breaking down. More to the point, you can't bat that way on the sort of decks they've rolled out against us in this series and against them in 2013.

Joe Root took 5/8 in a game they selected 3 quicks and Leech in, and the test was over in 2 days.

I don’t think their attitude across the board can win them a series but I will say this for the way they are playing. With McCullum himself having been a decent player of spin for large parts of his career, they would use their feet.

Root is a good player of spin in general and stokes albeit in a pretty dour test has a century over there from memory.

I actually think Leach’s fairly one dimensional bowling would be reasonably effective.

Not saying for one second that they would win, but I can see them making India have to think a bit more about how they’d have to approach it

 

[Gethelred]

I don’t think their attitude across the board can win them a series but I will say this for the way they are playing. With McCullum himself having been a decent player of spin for large parts of his career, they would use their feet.

Root is a good player of spin in general and stokes albeit in a pretty dour test has a century over there from memory.

You've been over to the B-G match thread, so I assume you either read my post or saw that I had a really long hard look at the stats for tests there.

One of the things I left out due to it not being relevant - overmuch - is that sometimes on a tour of India a player will go on a tear. Hayden is not unique in that way; you have Cook, Smith, Amla, Flower all going over there and the home side genuinely struggling to take their wicket. But the problem is that those teams do not beat India if another player doesn't also join in; if you look at the game England won in 2012, Root might've gotten his 218, but Sibley and Stokes both picked up 80 runs each and 4 other players each contributed 30 runs in their first innings. The same is true for Australia's sole victory against India on our last four attempts; Renshaw picked up a 50 in the first dig and Starc contributed with a 30 (with most of the upper-middle order making between 38 and 8) leaving Smith's 100 in the second innings on a harder deck than any produced this series to be accompanied by all players below Smith making between 19 and 31, with 3 30's. The second match of that tour was only drawn due to Maxwell's ton accompanying Smith's, forcing India to make an additional 200 runs to post 650 to bat Australia out of the game and set up a no win scenario Australia traditionally collapses under.

The interesting thing is, my assumption going into this analysis is that Root would be a lone hand, that he wouldn't be able to rely on his partners and Stokes is Ashwin's bunny. The last is true, but funnily enough Stokes' record against India in India is superior to his record against them at home; he averages 32.24; still worse than his career bating average, but significantly higher than his average in England (18.75).

But here's the problem; look at the rest of them:

Zac Crawley: 4 innings for 67 runs at 16.75.
Ben Duckett: never played in India.
Ollie Pope: 8 innings for 153 runs at 19.13
Joe Root: 20 innings, 952 runs at 50.11.
Harry Brook: never played in India.
Ben Stokes: 18 innings, 548 runs at 32.24.
Ben Foakes: 6 innings, 78 runs at 15.60.
Stuart Broad: 13 innings, 88 runs at 8.80

You'd be relying on Duckett and Brook to do an awful lot of work, and for 3-4 players to suddenly improve from awful to mediocre for it to work.

I actually think Leach’s fairly one dimensional bowling would be reasonably effective.

Jack Leach: 4 matches, 18 wickets at 28.72.

Not ineffective, no. But the problem in India isn't your ability to take wickets but your ability to score around their bowling.

Not saying for one second that they would win, but I can see them making India have to think a bit more about how they’d have to approach it

I can genuinely imagine them just churning out the decks they gave them last tour, or writing 'ashwin' in the wicket at one end - outside the off stump on a good length to a left hander - and 'jadeja' at the other, just outside off stump to the right hander.

It's not a problem, exactly, that cannot be solved with the methods they've used in the past. England would absolutely take wickets - Anderson's record is decent in India too, even if Broad's isn't - but it's not through lack of wickets that they'd lose.

 

[PhatBoy]

You've been over to the B-G match thread, so I assume you either read my post or saw that I had a really long hard look at the stats for tests there.

One of the things I left out due to it not being relevant - overmuch - is that sometimes on a tour of India a player will go on a tear. Hayden is not unique in that way; you have Cook, Smith, Amla, Flower all going over there and the home side genuinely struggling to take their wicket. But the problem is that those teams do not beat India if another player doesn't also join in; if you look at the game England won in 2012, Root might've gotten his 218, but Sibley and Stokes both picked up 80 runs each and 4 other players each contributed 30 runs in their first innings. The same is true for Australia's sole victory against India on our last four attempts; Renshaw picked up a 50 in the first dig and Starc contributed with a 30 (with most of the upper-middle order making between 38 and 8) leaving Smith's 100 in the second innings on a harder deck than any produced this series to be accompanied by all players below Smith making between 19 and 31, with 3 30's. The second match of that tour was only drawn due to Maxwell's ton accompanying Smith's, forcing India to make an additional 200 runs to post 650 to bat Australia out of the game and set up a no win scenario Australia traditionally collapses under.

The interesting thing is, my assumption going into this analysis is that Root would be a lone hand, that he wouldn't be able to rely on his partners and Stokes is Ashwin's bunny. The last is true, but funnily enough Stokes' record against India in India is superior to his record against them at home; he averages 32.24; still worse than his career bating average, but significantly higher than his average in England (18.75).

But here's the problem; look at the rest of them:

Zac Crawley: 4 innings for 67 runs at 16.75.
Ben Duckett: never played in India.
Ollie Pope: 8 innings for 153 runs at 19.13
Joe Root: 20 innings, 952 runs at 50.11.
Harry Brook: never played in India.
Ben Stokes: 18 innings, 548 runs at 32.24.
Ben Foakes: 6 innings, 78 runs at 15.60.
Stuart Broad: 13 innings, 88 runs at 8.80

You'd be relying on Duckett and Brook to do an awful lot of work, and for 3-4 players to suddenly improve from awful to mediocre for it to work.

Jack Leach: 4 matches, 18 wickets at 28.72.

Not ineffective, no. But the problem in India isn't your ability to take wickets but your ability to score around their bowling.

I can genuinely imagine them just churning out the decks they gave them last tour, or writing 'ashwin' in the wicket at one end - outside the off stump on a good length to a left hander - and 'jadeja' at the other, just outside off stump to the right hander.

It's not a problem, exactly, that cannot be solved with the methods they've used in the past. England would absolutely take wickets - Anderson's record is decent in India too, even if Broad's isn't - but it's not through lack of wickets that they'd lose.

All very fair points and agree totally about the need for the best batsman to have support. Hell look at the 3-0 drubbing WI copped when BCL scored 680 in a series in Sri Lanka. Foakes would be one to keep an eye on - he scored one possibly two hundreds on some pretty low and big turning SL wickets.

I wouldn’t have faith in Crawley scoring runs anywhere that doesn’t involve Pakistan.

But I’m prepared to give the others a bit of the benefit of the doubt and assume that they could possibly do some damage. What I think would be their biggest handicap is the idea that they would probably go out there all guns blazing and if/when it doesn’t work straight away, suddenly they just have absolutely no other way of approaching things

 

[Around the Wicket]

You'd be relying on Duckett and Brook to do an awful lot of work, and for 3-4 players to suddenly improve from awful to mediocre for it to work.

Brook's form won't last forever, averaged 37 over a long FC career so he'll hit a brick wall sooner or later.

 

[corbies]

Brook's form won't last forever, averaged 37 over a long FC career so he'll hit a brick wall sooner or later.

I'm not sure his first class matches as a 17-21 year old are that relevant to the player he will be as a Test player. He averaged 107 in County cricket last season and has just turned 24.

 

[corbies]

I'm not sure his first class matches as a 17-21 year old are that relevant to the player he will be as a Test player. He averaged 107 in County cricket last season and has just turned 24.

Another run a ball hundred today.