It has been a very disappointing performance by the Indian Men's cricket team during the 3 test match series with the New Zealand team with the greats of the Indian test team like Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, R Ashwin & Ravindra Jadeja failing to bring their best during the series. The series has been whitewashed by the Kiwis 3-0 and is even more humiliating as this happened on the home soil of India. Indian cricket team has not lost any test series in India for the last 18 consecutive series that were played in India since 2013. The series loss with 3 matches has largely affected India's chances of being in the World Test Championship final.
What really went wrong was the tactical decisions made by the Captain and the Coach where they opted to bat first in the 1st test when the pitch was more suiting the pacers resulting in the 46 run all out was the lowest score by the Indian side. And in the rest 2 matches the pacers were hardly used, with the spin attack not up to the mark. On the other hand, the Kiwis adapted to the conditions and the turn that the pitch was offering and the Kiwi spinners have used slower paces to get more out of the pitch. It is annoying to see Indian pacers missing this logic and bowling at higher pace only to be punished by the Kiwi batters and that ultimately pressurized all the players. Perhaps, Jadeja was the only one to understand this logic though a bit late and adapted to the conditions and could produce some favorable results. The only good thing that happened to India during this test series is Washington Sundar who could be considered as replacement to Ashwin or Jadeja as an all-rounder. The top order batters have miserably failed and it is not sure if going all guns blazing is a strategy cascaded by the new Indian team coach or the batters being habituated to the hitting since the evolution of T20 format of the cricket.
With the senior players like Rohit, Virat, Ashwin & Jadeja showing signs of their end of cricketing career in the red ball format, Indian cricket (BCCI) now has to own the responsibility of finding cricketers who are committed to the test cricket format. All such players should be made play more of domestic cricket in the same format to let them practice more and improve their skill pertaining to the test cricket. The ability to hit big boundaries in the T20 format would certainly not help the test cricketers as the test cricket requires a completely different approach and one has to show the patience and resilience. With Yashaswi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill and Rishabh Pant showing the intent and skills, India need more such batters to stabilize the top order. With all that has happened in the series against the Kiwis, there are more lessons learnt and the learnings are to be diligently implemented in the coming test matches. However, the next series being away from home at Australia requires more homework along with these learnings and hopefully Indian cricket team would look at it positively. With the next test match at home soil for India being scheduled in October 2025, chances of seeing Rohit, Virat, Ashwin & Jadeja playing in that appear slim.
Hope the Indian cricket team would retrospect and come back stronger and make their supporters proud again.
