Bully at home; ‘Billy’ away – Is India’s Test record really that bad?

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ByPrabu Thiruppathy, SportsCafe Editor

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I wanted to believe that India had won the series fair and square. I did feel really bad for ABD when he was fighting those lone battles through the series. But then, I turned around and tweeted Matthew Hayden when Umesh Yadav was wreaking havoc on the Proteas on the final day of the series asking where he was now – we are not just 3 day wonders on dustbowls. I even re-tweeted Ashwin when he asked them Aussies to eff off in gentle terms. But then, while taking nothing away from arguably the world’s best spinner, I always knew what I would see when I did pull my head out of the sand – however, I was not prepared for this! After all, we are the second ranked Test team in the world. How bad can it be?

Errr. Pretty bad.

  • In the period 2011-15, India have won an amazing 14 Tests in 18 home matches, but have managed only 4 wins out of 23 matches away from home – that puts us at a 78% win rate at home and 17% away, the highest and the lowest across all Test playing nations, barring Zimbabwe and Bangladesh.
  • Two of those four away wins came from subcontinental matches – just three months back in the Sri Lanka tour. The record was 2 of 21 until then. Incidentally, the tour was Kohli's maiden series as captain.
  • We just managed to pip Bangladesh, who are at 14% but going by the recent form of Bangaldesh, even that may not hold for long. 





excludes no result matches including wash-outs

  • The performance is a far cry from the 2006-10 era (for simplistic reasons, let's stick to the 5 year periods of 2006-10 and 2011-15 henceforth), when the Indian side had a much more balanced record - we managed to win across home and away - the home wins have gone up 25%, but away wins have dropped down by 28%.
  • The wins in 2006-10 came in the twilight days of the Sourav Ganguly era, Rahul Dravid's reign, Anil Kumble's brief stint and the glorious early captaincy of M S Dhoni - before it all started going downhill in 2011.

excludes no result matches including wash-outs, terrorist attacks

While this is slightly old news for some and alarming for some, what has started the debate all over was India’s decision to ‘doctor’ the pitches – matches ended in 3 days instead of the 5 days that Tests are supposed to go on for. Wickets tumbled left, right and center, and even the part-timers from South Africa seemed spin wizards for those brief 72 hours. The troupe of retired Aussie cricketers had quite a bit to say on the Nagpur pitch, which turned a dustbowl in 3 days. Hayden wanted a contest between bat and ball – which is what we all want as well, except probably Ravi Shastri.

Every home side tailors pitches for their own team. But then we seem to be taking things too far too often.

Virat Kohli, however, was deeply hurt and visibly angry that India is being singled out for criticism when 'everyone is doing it'.

A livid Kohli had defended the team's victory and trashed the furore around the pitch by saying, "I dont find it logical.

"It's a mindset or an opinion of someone. I don't relate to it, I don't understand it and I don't entertain it. It doesn't bother me or the team," 

However, a logical examination of data instead of mindsets helped put things in perspective:

  • India has seen the maximum number of 3-day Tests at 27.8%.
  • The Aussies, we lovingly bashed, seem to be doing pretty well with just 1 out of every 6 Tests there ending in 3 days. South Africa manages to pip us when we account for 4 day matches as well though.

  • Unsurprisingly, we seem to win 91% of the Tests if they are done before 5 days. (and 100% of them when it gets over in 3 days)

  • While Sri Lanka and Australia come close to India in home win rates for <5 day matches, they lie in the bottom half of the previous chart ( Percent of Tests <5days by host nation – 2011-2015) – they are not actually planning the easy wins!

  • Additonally, not much of the blame for these shorter matches can be laid on the doorstep of the much-touted aggressive gameplay of the current decade. Barring 2009-10, test cricket has seen similar result rates for the past 10 years.

excludes no result matches including wash-outs, terrorist attacks

May be it’s high time we really stopped taking hurt at every single criticism hurled our way – quite a bit of it seems warranted!

In conclusion

  1. May be its high time we started letting five day matches be five day matches. Imagine India being adamant on playing hockey only on grass and not astro-turf in the 80s. And the fans, definitely, deserve a better contest of bat and ball than the stuff dustbowls are made of.

  2. May be we need to re-look the ICC's Test ranking system. May be we need to look at grading home and away matches differently.

    1. A team that wins only 17% of its away matches does not deserve to be the second-ranked in the world.

    2. Cricket, very evidently, does not give one the same kind of home advantage that other games do.

  3. May be we started giving the pacers a chance. The fiery spell by Umesh Yadav on the last day of the last Test is the quality of fare we want to witness - alongside Ashwin's bowl of tricks. (Read: Indian cricket’s “strike bowler” syndrome)

Data source: espncricinfo.com

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