Bangladesh trounced. NZ up next. Is this India's greatest Test team ever?

In the winter of 1969, I discovered cricket. Bill Lawry’s Australia had come calling. A nephew, who was older than me and a cricket diehard, would tune in to the radio commentary. I was innocent to much of the game’s lexicon. But I understood that “out” was a bad word when it involved an Indian batsman. And fours and sixes were reasons to cheer, if struck by MAK Pataudi and company. The fours were plentiful, but sixes rarest of rare. Gundappa Vishwanath’s debut 137 at Kanpur’s Green Park, I learnt years later, was packed with 25 boundaries, an astounding high percentage for any era. That innings of grace and abandon, along with Eknath Solkar's tenacious 35, ensured the Test ended in a draw. My nephew celebrated it like a victory.The behaviour wasn’t odd. Those days India lost more Tests than it won. That had been the order of things since CK Nayudu and his brave men stepped into the playing fields of Lord’s for our Test debut in the summer of 1932. Before Independence, India did not win any of the 10 Tests we played, a period interrupted by World War II. The four draws, including a riotous one in Manchester, 1936, were the best we etched out.Things changed after India became a Republic. We started winning Tests. The first, rather appropriately, came against ex-colonial masters England in Madras, 1952. But, overall, the state of Indian cricket was akin to the last lines in Thomas Hardy’s novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge, “Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.” Between 1932-69, India won only 13% of its Tests; 42% games were lost. Which is why a draw, especially a hard-earned affair against a formidable opponent, was a good reason to rejoice. My nephew wasn’t being over-enthusiastic. medium nocaption114232352Fittingly, 55 years later, Green Park was again the setting where a new generation showcased the enormous strides made by Indian cricket in recent years. We all know what happened in the second Test against Bangladesh last month. Not just cricket lovers in India, pundits across the world were gobsmacked by Team India’s audacity of approach, its eagerness to envisage victory when over two-and-a-half days of play was washed out and its ability to execute the plan. A few statistics bear repetition to reaffirm the immensity of the event. India’s run rate in the match, 7.36, was the highest ever in the 147-year-old history of Test cricket. In the first innings, India smashed 51 runs in three overs, staggering even by T20 standards. In earlier eras, that would have been considered a good score at lunch. India faced just 312 balls to win the match, the fourth fewest ever for a Test win. And it was India’s 18th consecutive series win at home starting 2013. Over the years, dozens of touring teams have failed to breach this fortress. medium114217190Which brings us to the question: Is this India’s greatest Test team ever? It’s a serious question and it deserves a fact-based analysis before arriving at an answer.Draw no more Looking and analysing the data over the decades, one immediately notices how Indian Test cricket has improved for the better. The “celebrating a draw” mindset was buried forever in the early 1970s when Ajit Wadekar’s team scored two outstanding series victories, both 1-0, in the West Indies and England. India’s first Test win and series triumph abroad had happened in New Zealand (3-1) under Pataudi in 1967-68. But these two were more formidable teams then. The West Indies middle-order included Garfield Sobers, Rohan Kanhai and Clive Llyod, three all-time greats. In Bombay, people lined up on both sides of the road for miles to greet Wadekar’s men on return. The public euphoria matched those of ODI and T20 World Cup victories later.Overall, the team’s success in the 1970s was India’s finest till then. The teams, mostly led by Wadekar and Bishan Singh Bedi in this politically volatile decade, played 64 Tests between 1970-79. A decent 32% of those games at home were won, roughly one out of every three Tests; and 20%, or one out of every five, abroad. For those who had been following the game since the 1950s, this was more than incredible. It was unthinkable. Port of Spain in 1976 was the setting of one such unbelievable triumph when Bedi’s men chased down a record 404 against Clive Llyod's West Indies. Three years later, that record was almost broken when opener Sunil Gavaskar’s marathon 221 took captain Srinivas Venkataraghavan’s team agonisingly close to victory against England at Oval. India fell short by nine runs; the encounter ended in a draw.It must also be pointed out that some victories, notably the 2-0 series win against Alvin Kallicharan’s West Indies at home and a 3-2 series loss against Bobby Simpson’s Australia away, came against “B” teams. These were the Packer years (1977-79). The top cricketers from most Test playing countries, excluding India, had signed contracts with the Aussie billionaire Kerry Packer and were playing in his World Series – cricket’s first taste of big money, coloured clothing and multiple camera tv coverage. These teams were without the big guns. medium nocaption114232349'Tigers at home, paper tigers abroad'The seventies turned out to be a false dawn. In the eighties, victories, especially when playing away from home, were as rare as saris in cabaret. India triumphed in just three in the 39 Tests it played abroad, roughly one in every 12 games. Even at home the percentage of wins dipped sharply to 19%. As Russian communist Vladimir Lenin had once said in another context, this was “taking one step forward and two steps backward”.At home, the 1990s were better than the 1980s. Playing most under Mohd Azharuddin in this decade, India earned the left-handed label, “Tigers at home and paper tigers abroad”. These years marked the flowering of Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli, the emergence of Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid adding spine and heft to India’s batting. Tendulkar’s growth from a teenage prodigy to one of the world's best was thrilling for a new generation of young Indians growing up in a newly liberalised economy and in the world of satellite television. The quality of cricket coverage on TV radically improved and lured more youngsters to the game. The spin department, led by the distinctive Anil Kumble, effectively exploited the pitches tailormade for them. But the pace attack, barring speedster Javagal Srinath, was mediocre at best. And it shows up in the win-loss ratio difference between home and abroad. Between 1990-99, under Azhar and Tendulkar, India notched up an amazing 57% wins at home but only a disappointing 3% away victories. The label was apt. medium114217876Holding their ownThe true test of any team’s greatness is how consistently it wins in unfamiliar conditions, some of them even hostile. The manufacturing of any such unit is not an event, but a process. It was under Ganguly (2000-05), with John Wright as coach, that India first displayed the intent to win abroad. It can be safely suggested, and backed by statistics, that the seeds of becoming a great team were planted in those early years of the new millennium. It was anything but easy. This was the time when Steve Waugh’s Kangaroos were in their arrogant prime. But in comparison with the 1999 Aussie tour when India was thrashed 3-0, Ganguly and company held their own in 2003-04. The series was drawn 1-1. Those who saw the last Test in Sydney might recall how India came close to winning the match and the series. This was also the era when India first beat Pakistan in Pakistan, still a robust, all-round side.Ganguly captained India in 49 Tests, a record broken later by MS Dhoni (60) and later Virat Kohli (68). But his tenure shows a remarkable jump in away wins, almost 40%. India had never performed better abroad in Tests. Even the captains who followed, Dravid (30%) and Dhoni (20%) couldn't better the percentage of wins abroad. In fact, statistics show that under Dhoni, India was “Tigers at Home, Paper Tigers Abroad 2.0”. In 30 Tests on home pitches, Dhoni’s men registered a record 70% wins, only bettered by his successor Kohli. But the team often fell way short when tested abroad. medium114218022Making it to the topIndia renewed its territorial ambitions under Kohli (2014-22), first with Ravi Shastri and then Dravid as coach. The Indian thinktank emphasised on creating a pack of fast bowlers. As if to walk the talk, more fast-friendly pitches were prepared across regions. With offie Ravichandran Ashwin and left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja being quality all-rounders and adding depth to batting, Kohli could opt for three pure pacers in the playing eleven. Ishant Sharma, Mohd Shami, Umesh Yadav and, from 2018 onwards, Jasprit Bumrah, gave India a match-winning quartet that challenged batsmen across the world. Even Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohd Siraj (Dec 2020 onwards) added value and variety to the pace attack. The bowlers were backed by some wonderful glovework of Wriddhiman Saha, regarded by many experts as the best during his prime, and Rishabh Pant, a competent keeper blessed with a destructive X-factor in batting. Batters such as Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, and above all, Kohli himself made this a solid all-round unit.The ICC introduced Test ranking in 2003. Several Indian teams made it to the top, notably Dhoni’s troops from November 2009 to August 2011, a 21 months long stretch with a rating of 125 at its peak. This was improved upon by Kohli when India stood at the summit from October 2016 to May 2020 – an unbroken 43 months with a rating of 130, the highest India ever had.The record of this team, both home and away, set Indian benchmarks. Kohli’s men enjoy a 77% home win record and 43% in away games. Combined, that comes to 59% wins. No team in the history of Indian cricket had a better record of victories, home or away.Now the captain and the coach have changed. Team India 2024, with Sharma as skipper and Gautam Gambhir as head coach, have the same nucleus as the one under Kohli. The latest upgrades have come in the form of opener Yashasvi Jaiswal, an aggressive southpaw currently in the form of his life, the stylish Shubman Gill and, above all, the new and improved Jasprit Bumrah, who is simply the world’s best bowler in any format. Sharma's cool captaincy and his willingness to take risks as an opener and lead the charge from the front lends this unit a new outrageous dimension. Setting the tone both as batter and skipper worked hugely to India’s advantage in its triumphant T20 World Cup campaign and the same template was followed against Bangladesh at Green Park. Who scores 100 runs in 10.1 overs in Test cricket? This team did. To get back to the original question: Is this India’s greatest team ever? Statistically, yes. Under the Sharma dispensation, Team India has a combined 67% win record (77% home and 40% abroad), higher than any team before. But there's a long way to go before the deal is sealed. Being the best isn’t just about statistics. It is also about setting bigger goals, aiming for higher targets. The win over Bangladesh, a team that had arrived full of swagger after demolishing Pakistan, underscores that attitude. But the new Team India also needs to trounce the visiting Kiwis and overcome the Aussies in the coming months to be the all-conquering team it wants to be. Winning the World Test Championship final next summer – something no Indian team has done before – will be the icing on the cake.Tailpiece: Gundappa Vishwanath also watched Rajesh Khanna's superhit Aradhana with Eknath Solkar during his debut Test in Kanpur, 1969. “It was the only time I went to the cinema hall during a Test match,” he wrote in his autobiography, “Wrist Assured”.