As the saying goes: “Never waste a good crisis.”

India’s recent series of defeats against New Zealand and the underlying problems in the system have plunged it into a crisis of considerable proportions. This is not just a phase but a critical juncture that demands immediate attention and action from the leadership of Indian cricket.

Respect the rhythm of the Test Match

The current coach boasted in a recent interview that this Indian Test team could score 400 runs in a day. However, the team seems to have lost the ability to strike even for 400 minutes. Batting time, just like runs, is essential in Test cricket.

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It is shocking to see commentators discussing statistics such as number of balls bowled since the last boundary was scored, six-run scoring rates, etc. These statistics belong to T20 and not Test cricket. Even at this age of T20, the natural rhythm of Test cricket must be respected.

A scoring rate of around four runs per over is the ideal pace in Test cricket. If you try to bowl faster than that, you have to take more risks, which will mean a bucket of wickets on typical Test surfaces. You can’t win many test matches by scoring 250 runs in 40 overs; the scoring rate is great, but the score is not so much.

India needs a coaching setup that keeps pace and prepares a team that does that too. This whole charade of players playing their natural game is a complete farce. T20 and Test cricket are different sports, and players must have different “natural” games to be successful in both or one of them. It is high time that India recognizes that Bazball is a fad that succeeded on ultra-flat pitches and failed miserably on the right testing surfaces.

Rohit Sharma. (Photo by Abhishek Chinnappa/Getty Images)

Aligning domestic cricket with international testing strategy

If you watch Ranji Trophy matches, you will see more green pitches than brown. One wonders if these pitches were designed to help Indian players play better in SENA conditions (South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia) or if it is a ploy to help the pitches last throughout of the season.

However, the impact of these pitches is that future Indian batters seem to have lost the art of defending on a turning track. A glance at any of Sarfaraz Khan’s four innings in Pune or Mumbai will tell the story. It is time for the BCCI to increase the diversity of pitches in domestic tournaments and help groom spin bowling and spin batting.

Leave aside the raging returners, even on typical Indian pitches, hitters must be able to play spin well to survive in the third and fourth innings. So, domestic cricket grounds need to prepare batters to face the spinning ball.

In addition to pitches not being awarded, Indian Test players do not play domestic cricket regularly.

Some players, like Virat Kohli, haven’t played in over a decade. With Rohit Sharma and Kohli retiring from T20s, the current Test team and the T20 team are reasonably well separated.

So, those who play Test cricket should be required to play a certain number of domestic cricket matches as a selection criterion. Just as passing the yo-yo fitness test is mandatory to make the team, the number of long training matches played in a season should be mandatory.

Specialized units for home and away testing

The cricket ground landscape can be broadly classified into subcontinental and SENA conditions. Subcontinental courts are easy on spin and have low bounce, while SENA courts are seam friendly and have higher bounce. The batting techniques needed to survive and thrive in these conditions are different.

The type of bowling that batters face in these conditions also differs. It is therefore inappropriate to expect the same group of batters to succeed in both sets of conditions in the era of a crowded international circuit. India should select the batting unit based on the pitch rather than expecting the unit to succeed in all conditions.

If they can play Shardul Thakur instead of Ravichandran Ashwin in England, why can’t they play Axar Patel instead of Virat Kohli on the rotating pitches at home?

Cricket is a multi-format sport. Cricket boards need to develop teams, core strategy and specialist coaching for these formats.

A look at Rishabh Pant’s career will give you the answer. Pant is an absolute genius with the bat. However, even he was not able to master the T20 batting as much as he did in the Test batting. The sooner the Indian board realizes that such a difference in effectiveness between the formats is a feature and not a bug, the sooner it will work to put in place different building blocks of these two forms of cricket.

The IPL teams will look after the T20 talent base in India while the BCCI can focus on the building blocks of Test cricket.