This is a team in transition. Their main batters are past their best, they rarely get a pick of their first-choice bowlers, and they don’t have a fit captain. In this year alone, India have had three captains in seven Tests. There is a revolving door in the bowling department because of fitness issues and the odd debatable selection.
This team is not that ruthless clinical side that used to rarely ever let an advantage go. In four Tests this year, India have been in situations they used to close out matches from with eyes closed, but they have lost three of those and are 45 for 4 chasing 145 in the fourth.
Two worrisome trends made a comeback in Mirpur on day three where India effectively had Bangladesh at 26 for 6 in the third innings thanks to their 87-run lead in the first innings.
The worrying sign is that in this year, teams have been able to push back from positions of struggle and push back at a pace that India have not been able to arrest.
Overall, India bowled well in the third innings. In fact they produced false responses more frequently than Bangladesh did in the fourth, but during the two partnerships that got Bangladesh 106 runs in 20.4 overs they often failed to bowl to their fields, conceding easy boundaries despite in-and-out fields.
On another day, one of the four catches sticks, and we are not talking of this, but that might just cover up the other small cloud on the horizon. The batting of this team in transition has needed Nos. 5 to 8 to bail them out more often than they or their leadership will find acceptable.
After a point, batters can do only so much if the bowling is unerring in difficult conditions. That is the nature of Test cricket. Now unless India’s bowlers have been way better than the opposition’s over this period, the batting cloud is not as dark as it might seem.
It still is a cloud. When India dominated Test cricket from 2016 to 2020, their top four averaged twice the opposition’s top four, a little over 50 as against a little over 25. So unless the bowling has dipped dramatically over the last two years, the batting has. Kohli is averaging in the 20s since the start of 2020, Cheteshwar Pujara is barely in the 30s, and only Rohit Sharma is in the 40s.
There has been a dramatic dip in the averages of India’s top four, and a small rise in the opposition’s top four in this period as compared to the four golden years before that.
A transition has to be delicately handled, and India’s World Test Championship hopes also rest on winning four out of five Tests, including this one. Usually you would think India are the favourites to make the final considering the remaining four Tests are at home, where they have lost just two Tests in the last 10 years. However, this batting transition and the occasional bowling profligacy might make their fans more nervous than they should be given their record at home.
Sidharth Monga is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo
