The nuances of India's approach at home that need a re-look

Even the very best of naysayers wouldn't have seen India going down three Tests to none against a touring New Zealand side at home. Rohit Sharma's side did enter the series with some their famed invincibility slightly fraying at the edges; they had after all lost two home Tests in the last two years - the same number they'd dropped in the previous ten years on home soil. Even so, it required a perfect storm of luck, tactical shrewdness, and tenacity to rock India's boat, one that that cruised past 18 previous challenges. In New Zealand, they found a perfect foil.

If India's previous home defeat in 2012/13 saw a change of guard to the current generation, this season might well have shown further evidence that the time for another baton change is not far away. India have completed their home leg in the third iteration of the World Test Championship (WTC) with a mixed record of six wins and four defeats and their qualification hopes of a making a third straight final hangs by a thread.

With the dust slowly settling down on this stunning reversal, here's a look at the little nuances of India's Test game that will need an introspection the next time they play a Test at home.

Do result pitches nullify India's strengths?

The one major change in outlook that WTC has brought about is teams looking to maximise points from their home games. As a result, teams have embraced result oriented pitches. Only 12.6% of Tests under WTC have ended in draws and this figure further drops to 5.5% if we exclude the weather affected matches (only considering draws where at least 400 overs of play possible, or roughly 80 overs X 5 days).

The corresponding proportion of stalemates in the five preceding years to the inception of WTC is 7.9% and if we go even further back to the start of the millennium, draws accounted for 10% of the games, clearly underlining the impact of WTC on result oriented pitches.

Remarkably, India kick-started their first cycle (2019-21) of the WTC with pitches that were more seam friendly, and spinners played a supporting cast in series against South Africa and Bangladesh in 2019. But with Covid throwing spanner into the work, India were forced to resort to turners when they played England at home in 2021 - a series that they had to win to book a spot in the finals after a change in the qualification criteria midway. As Joe Root took full toll of winning the toss and buried India under a mountain of runs in the opening Test of the series, India were forced to prepare tracks that would take turn from the onset to nullify the toss advantage.

The modus operandi kind of stuck with India and every time they needed a favourable result they turned to tracks that offered appreciable turn even with the risk of it backfiring on their own ageing batters. After New Zealand hung on to a narrow draw in Kanpur in 2021, India dished out a turner at Wankhede in the following Test that saw spinners taking 33 of the 36 wickets. After India dropped the series in South Africa in 2021/22, India rolled out another turner in Bengaluru to the visiting Sri Lankans in a bid to maximize WTC points.

The series against Australia last year witnessed pitches that assisted spinners significantly in the first three Tests before a flatbed was rolled out for the final Test in Ahmedabad after India only needed a draw to confirm their spot in the finals. In this recent series, after Bengaluru's weather affected the way the pitch behaved on the opening day, the riposte to the defeat saw India dish out turners at Pune and Mumbai.

The common factor among India's home defeats since 2021, with the notable exception of Bengaluru Test, has been visiting team's spin attack out bowling that of India's. The pitches that often veer towards the extreme narrowed the gap in quality between that of India's experienced spinners to the relatively less skilled operators of the touring teams. In 24 Tests in India between 2016 and 2019, Indian spinners averaged 25.37 while their visiting counterparts averaged more than the double at 52.68 (take out the Pune Test of 2017, the visitors average further falls to 58.33). Since 2021, the home spinners have improved the average by five points to 20.20 while the visitors have it down by 20 points to 32.42. Further, visiting spinners strike every 55.2 balls in the period since 2021 - almost at a similar rate Indian spinners picked a wicket in the 2016-19 period (56.0).

India's last three series defeats at home witnessed some of the greatest ever bowlers in the opposition ranks - Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock in 2000, Jason Gillespie alongside Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne in 2004 and Graeme Swann and James Anderson in 2012. The last three years have witnessed several visiting spinners, with otherwise modest Test records to show for and in some cases even inferior record in first class cricket, reaping rewards. Joe Root, Todd Murphy, Matthew Kunhemann, Tom Hartley, Shoaib Bashir, and Micthell Santner all took their maiden five-fers in India in this period with the hauls of Kunhemann, Hartley, and Santher paving way for India's defeats while Bashir's nearly conspired for another one in Ranchi.

Compared to the class of Warne in 2004 and Swann in 2012, the troika of Ajaz Patel, Mitchell Santner, and Glenn Phillips had a combined tally of 146 wickets from 55 Tests at the start of the series.

Left-arm spinners have been a scourge for India's right heavy top order on these turners and oppositions XIs fielded at least one of the ilk in all but one Test in India since 2021. Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, and Shubman Gill have batted in the top four in most of these games have struggled against this style of bowling consistently, resulting in crippled returns from the top order that necessitated rescue acts from the lower middle order on more regular basis.

Waiting for the one with your name on it

"I haven't defended a lot in this series because I haven't been there much to defend,.. I don't see that I have lost faith in my defense. It's just that I need to spend more time defending balls, which I haven't done in this series," remarked a pensive Rohit Sharma in his post-series press conference after a tough home season with the bat in which he scored just 133 runs across ten innings.

India came to the New Zealand series after a heist against Bangladesh in Kanpur where there aggressive batting fetched them a win out of nowhere after two entire days of play were lost to rain.

On tracks that offer significant purchase for spinners, the general perception is that a ball with your name on it will arrive sooner than later and a rational approach would be to maximise your time in the middle collecting as many runs as possible, putting the pressure back on the bowler to force him out of his optimal lengths. While it holds true of the most extreme tracks such as Pune 2017 or Ahmedabad 2021, the level of jeopardy in some of the wickets that were in play against New Zealand didn't always merit that approach. Will Young, Player of the Series, struck at only 53.04 in the series and batted out 238 balls across two innings in testing conditions against a high quality attack at the Wankhede Stadium.

Sarfaraz Khan, who made his way to the side after grinding out tough runs in domestic cricket, was another player who chose to find a way out by going all out attack. He tried to hit his way out of trouble in the first innings of the first two Tests but holed out and in the final morning of the third game, he hit a low full toss to deep square leg when India were reeling in at 29/4 chasing 147. His aggressive batting found success in the second innings in Bengaluru when the pitch was less spiteful, but it seemed like he didn't back his defence to hold fort when he needed to weather the storm in the middle.

There isn't enough evidence to suggest this is an approach backed by the whole team, like it is for England under Stokes and McCullum, but how Indian batters can put the pressure back on opposition spinners on spiteful wickets is something the think tank appears to be still figuring out. Skipper Rohit even spoke about Indian batters needing to use the sweep shots better after the defeat in Pune, but the results of them using it in the middle at the Wankhede were mixed at best.

Have the spinners been well supported by the fields set?

The toss is a significant factor on turners as tracks tend to get worse for batting and provide more assistance to spin as the game progresses. Tom Latham won crucial tosses in Pune and Mumbai and got the best use of the pitch when they were at their optimal best for batting. They raced to 197/3 in the first innings in Pune and 159/3 in Mumbai which in hindsight proved to be the clincher as India were always playing catching up from there on.

Both Pune and Mumbai pitches took turn right from the first session and runs were at a premium, especially as the game progressed. India resorted to defensive fields very early on as every run scored in the opposition's first innings added to their target in the fourth innings where they had to endure even more challenging conditions. India played into New Zealand's hands here as they used an array of sweeps and were fleet flooded to throw Indian spinners off their lengths that helped them to open up gaps to milk singles. India bowled only 11 maidens across 128.5 overs in Pune and just seven out 95.3 in Mumbai, underlining how New Zealand batters kept rotating the strike and not let Indian spinners to bowl at one batter on an end.

India did use in-out fields earlier in the year to good effect against an England side that used boundaries as its primary scoring currency. India often had boundary riders covering deep pockets square off the wicket either side to counter the sweeps and reverse sweeps against English batters, to cut off their boundary options and meddled with the tempo of their batting. New Zealand, on the other hand, played it smarter by taking singles on offer with the occasional boundary. Against spin, the English batters hit 24.3% of balls for singles and doubles on more conducive tracks for batting, while New Zealand managed to rotate strike 27.4% of the balls in far less favourable batting circumstances in the last two games underscoring the difference in approach which ought to force a re-think in strategy before the next home assignment.