To hear Gautam Gambhir, India’s head coach, respond to a question not long after the home team slid to 93 all out in pursuit of a target of 124, that the 22 yards at Eden Gardens was “exactly the pitch we were looking for” and the type they intend to play their home cricket on, was eye-opening. And, frankly, concerning for Indian cricket fans.
Last year, in Gambhir’s second series in charge, India sunk to an unprecedented 0-3 loss to New Zealand – their first ever at home by that margin. It cost them a place in the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) final.
Ahead of the home season, the new captain Shubman Gill addressed the issue of turning tracks and expressed confidence that India would play their home matches on more sporting surfaces, in hopes of taking Tests deeper.
And now we hear Gambhir read from an entirely different script, three Test matches later. Were Gambhir and Gill spooked by India’s most recent match, the second of the 2-0 sweep of West Indies in New Delhi, which went into the final day?
How else to attach logic to India willingly asking for a track on which the ball spun sharply from day one, while also aiding the quicks on both sides with its variable bounce (22 wickets fell to spin, 16 to pace), and on which, across 206.2 overs in eight sessions, there was just a solitary half-century?
It on precisely these types of tracks that the scope for plans backfiring increase, irrespective of how advantageous it is to India’s spinners (they picked four for this Test). This desire for WTC points saw India, from 2021 onwards, routinely doll out raging turners. Along the way, while ticks in the W column added up, the batting averages of several leading batsmen fell, to the extent that against the likes of Todd Murphy, Matt Kuhnemann and Tom Hartley, some of them were reduced to walking wickets.
Now, a transitional Indian team has been beaten inside eight sessions of a two-match home series which they cannot win, on an Eden Gardens surface widely derided for making life miserable for batsmen on both sides.
Sourav Ganguly, now the Cricket Association of Bengal president, stressed after the loss that India’s aim should be to play on truer pitches and aim to win Test matches in five days, not three. “I hope Gautam Gambhir is listening,” said Ganguly. “He needs to take the wicket out of the game, because if the batsmen are not putting up 350-400, he will not win Test matches.”
Temba Bavuma, the one batsman who understood the treacherous pitch the best, said it was “tricky to trust the bounce” at Eden Gardens and expresses surprise at how the track played.
If the thought process behind India requesting for such raging turners is easy points to get to the WTC final in 2027, well then it is one fraught with risk. The third Test of the 2023 Border Gavaskar Trophy was played on one such pitch at Indore, and after India were beaten inside three days, with 18 of 20 wickets falling to Australia’s spinners, the home team was hastily forced to shelve plans for a green top in Ahmedabad and ask for a road on which a draw could be achieved to salvage a 2-1 series victory.
Gambhir put the blame for this loss to South Africa on India’s batting, which in 97.2 overs produced a highest score of 39. Yes, batting was very tough on that Eden Gardens track, but surely India could have put up a better fight. Axar Patel said after stumps on day two that India would not like to chase more than 125. As it panned out, India were set 124, after bowling out South Africa for 153, but failed to achieve even that as the visitors chipped away heroically.
Simon Harmer took four wickets to make it eight in the match, Keshav Maharaj took two wickets. Washington Sundar top-scored with 31, Axar swung his bat for 26 as the end neared, and India were bowled out for 93.
South Africa took a gamble by dropping a spinner who as Player of the Series in their most recent tour. India picked four spinners. And in the end, it came down to which team had a batter capable of batting the longest. And that was Bavuma, who led his team admirably in adverse conditions and who, fittingly, helped kill of India’s last chance of victory by holding a brilliant catch.
Thus ended an utterly incredible Test match, in which South Africa’s two spinners and Bavuma, with 55 not out in their second innings, proved the difference.
The nature of the Eden Gardens surface attracted criticism over all three days of the Test and will no doubt be debated leading up to the second Test in Guwahati, where a Test match has never been held. Why did Gambhir ask for such a track? And what have India gained from such surfaces?
Whatever the truth, the fact that is that this team was caught napping in their own conditions and beaten at their own game, and once again the skill of India’s batting versus spin has come into debate. South Africa, defending WTC champions, are 1-0 in the series and cannot lose it from here. As for India, well, they have plenty to ponder, not least their familiar failings against spin.
