Champions at home

But the cricket team has to improve its abysmal overseas record

As India defeated Australia in the fourth Test match earlier this week, it not only wrested back the prestigious Border-Gavaskar Trophy but also accomplished a very rare feat — holding the rubber against all Test playing nations. Only two other teams have done so in the past — Australia and South Africa — and arguably, it is a measure of a team’s dominance over its rivals.
 
This achievement has come after a fabulous home season of 13 Test matches where India won 10, lost just one, and in the process notched up series wins against New Zealand, England, Bangladesh and Australia (2-1 in four Tests). Add to these the four-Test series that India won against West Indies in West Indies this cricket season before starting the home stretch. That, too, India won 2-0.

 
And while there are some changes in the team in the different formats, the overall stress on bulk of the players stays and, in that context, it is important to note that India also defeated New Zealand, England and Zimbabwe (in Zimbabwe) in One Day Internationals, and the latter two in T-20 series. The only series loss, across formats, in this cricket season came against West Indies in T-20s. But that was an away series and back at home, India was invincible, crushing every opposition.
 

Most credit for these successes has gone to the performance of the players. There have been several outstanding performers such as Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara on the batting front and R Ashwin and R Jadeja on the bowling front. The Ashwin-Jadeja duo took 153 wickets in the 13 Tests, accounting for two in every three wickets, at an average of 24.14. This is the best haul of wickets by a pair of bowlers in a Test season and they lead a list that features such deadly duos as Brett Lee and Shane Warne (2005-06), Glenn McGrath and Warne (2004-05) and Malcolm Marshall and Michael Holding (1983-84).

 
Among the batsmen, Kohli was almost unstoppable, until the law of averages caught up with him during the series against Australia in which he could not aggregate even 50 over the three Tests he played. But before that, Kohli hit four double hundreds in the full season of 2016-17, including one in West Indies, and one each against England, New Zealand and Bangladesh, to accumulate 1,457 runs in 13 Tests. Pujara, too, scored close to 1,400 runs in the 17 Tests he played during the full season. There were several other players who stepped up and turned the tide in favour of India on the many occasions that the home team looked like losing steam.  

 
Yet, the truth is this team under Kohli is still far from being a champion side. For that to happen, India needs to win away games. As of now, the wins against all the major opponents — Australia, England, and South Africa — have come at home. That is what differentiated the truly great teams led by Clive Lloyd or Steve Waugh — they consistently won at home and away matches. Be it batting or bowling, averages of the same stars sink like a stone when they stand in the visitor’s gallery. Winning at home, no matter how resoundingly, is neither new nor enough. And the hard reality is that a majority of the fans now see India’s win on turning pitches to beat a strong overseas team as nothing more than an old trick — one they have seen many times before. India’s abysmal overseas record dampens the fans’ enthusiasm when India win at home these days. For, they want their team to whip Australia, South Africa and England in their backyards.