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Follow UsHow would you like to remember the Day 2 of the Bengaluru Test between India and New Zealand?
A massacre?
An outlier?
Or a heroic summation of a team that were given zero chance?
It’s possible that the story of October 17, 2024, is about all of those. It’s possible to feel sympathetic for the Indian team and, at the same time, know that New Zealand made the best possible use of the luck to hand India an ignominious 46 all out.
India came into the series with a 2-0 drubbing of Bangladesh and were unbeaten in a Test series at home for 12 long years. New Zealand came into the series on the back of a humiliating defeat to Sri Lanka. On paper, they were on equal footing. But then it rained, and destiny decided to play its hands.
Rohit Sharma knew very well what he was getting the team into when he decided to bat first on a cloudy wicket that had been undercover for the last three days. He knew that batting here would be a function of their patience level and not a matter of aggression.
But then he had hedged his bets to prevent his side from batting fourth on a possible dust bowl. He had reasons to believe that with rain being predicted for the next two days, it would stay overcast when they bowl. All of those things seemed solid on paper, and you can’t fault him for that.
But you can fault him for his batting. You can fault Virat Kohli for playing on the front foot to a bouncer. You can fault the team management’s decision not to send KL Rahul to No.3 - a batter who has centuries in Australia, England, and South Africa as an opener. Because 46 all out may be an outlier, but the impending calls that resulted in this situation weren’t really.
“On a pitch where there was assistance for seamers, and now that we got out for 46, you can say the shot selection wasn't up to the mark. It was a bad day. Sometimes you want to do something but couldn’t execute it,” Rohit Sharma admitted in the press conference.
Rohit also explained their decision to send KL Rahul at No.6 instead of No.3 when the ball was swinging so much. “We don't want to touch KL's batting position much. He has found a place at #6, so let's give him a rope there. Same with Sarfaraz, we wanted to give him a similar position where he bats. So, Virat wanted to take responsibility. And that's a good sign of players taking responsibility,” the skipper said.
Sure, a decision had been made in the best interest of the team and to give KL enough breathing space to settle down ahead of Australia. Consistency is a good thing—and perhaps a sign of security in the dressing room.
But there’s also something about playing according to the situation, which Gautam Gambhir and Rohit have advocated multiple times in recent times. Playing according to the situation helped them win the Kanpur Test against Bangladesh in a historic fashion, and using some of that to negotiate the batting order for one Test wouldn’t have been a bad idea.
The Bangalore Test is almost out of hand. Only rain Gods and a miracle can help India salvage some points from this Test, but this should be a cautionary tale ahead of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. India may have come out triumphant in the last editions, but the strategic scheduling hasn’t left any ambiguity for the home team this time. The Pat Cummins-led side are waiting like wounded lions to catch the prey, and the slightest bit of rigidity may spell the death keel of the Indian team.
This is also a cautionary tale for the Indian batting order. The mindset of throwing the body on the line and respecting the balls coming their way, which helped them win the 2021 away series against England, needs to be on show when the situation becomes demanding. In that understanding lies the key to their success.
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