Why is India Struggling in Tests: Data, Tactics & Truth | Ashwin × Jarrod Kimber × Himanish Ganjoo

[vvvslaxman]

How come there is no past Indian batsman having a channel discussing technialities of batting.  Also  Varun Aaaron should start a channel for fast bowling. These are very informative.

[putrevus]

19 hours ago, Lord said:

 

Because every bowling attack needs some scores to defend. In Kolkata Test we bowled them out for 159 & 153 and only had to chase 123. Still fell short by 30. How is bowling at any fault?

 

As for bowling speeds, they are bowling speeds that have been working since the last decade. 

 

The slower speeds have worked against Indian and Pak batsmen. Indian bats hardly used sweep or feet movement to counter it. If you allow bowler to bowl how they want, they gonna run over you. 

Don't you need batsmen in the team to find fault. If you play with one batsman and he was out injured, who do you blame.

 

[vvvslaxman]

In this day and age most bowlers are aware of what they have to do to improve. As Ashwin told in this conversation, he does have chat with Sundar over the phone on and off. So Sundar pretty sure knows what he has to do. But it is not easy to dramatically modify your bowling style. It will come with experience. I am sure Harmer was doing the same at 25 or 26.  Tanush Kotian looks a bit innocuous at this point. But he has scope for improvement. India has to groom bowlers by having htem bowl 1000s of overs in domestic. In this chat one can understand how inexperienced our bowlers are in terms of number of overs at any level. Honing your bowling skills is not just about bowling in Tests. You can learn even in street cricket. You need to keep bowling at some level as Ashwin said. He has admitted his club cricket experienced played a big part. How come Kully not bowling enough overs. Mostly sitting in the bench. I don't want Kuldeep wasting his talent. Once he gets the control that Warne had he can dictate terms all  around the world. Let us stop comparing bowlers at this point and allow them to grow. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-Lz5pd8fnaA

[putrevus]

Sundar is made his FC debut  FC since 2016  if he still stinks in both bowling and batting, he will never do anything worthwhile in international cricket.

 

Enough of long rope being given to guys like Sundar. He was one of main reasons for this test series loss.

 

First test he screwed India with his batting and second test with his bowling. While his fellow offspinner won SA the series.

Edited December 1, 2025 by putrevus

[vvvslaxman]

A man who bowled grand totla of one over on a turner and the guy who scored the most runs and faced the most balls in the series is responsible. Not the clowns who parade around as batters. Same sh** happened in NZ series too.

[Lord]

12 hours ago, putrevus said:

Don't you need batsmen in the team to find fault. If you play with one batsman and he was out injured, who do you blame.

 

 

Exactly. We were playing too many half batsmen

[Lord]

13 hours ago, AKane said:

Yes the batsmen fell short in Kolkata but their bowlers have a say in the match too. Their bowlers get paid too.

 

How about Guwahati? Did the bowlers do their job there? Compared to Jansen(pace) and Harmer(spin)?

 

Maybe in Kolkata    our bowlers bowled well but their bowlers bowled better.

Maybe in Guwahati our bowlers bowled crap but their bowlers bowled well.

 

Why are batsmen not a fault? Scoring 93 and 140 etc is equivalent to bowlers conceding 600. That didn't happen.The0 re were many drops and stupid Pant captaincy too.

 

Kolkata was a flat deck. Maybe not 480 track but definitely 350-400 track. We scored only 200 first dig

 

Batsmen getting out to short balls on such slow tracks is more bad batting than great bowling. Jansen was ineffective in Pak too. 

 

Harmer was good but in modern cricket such slow spinners work only against poor bats.

 

 

[tapandrun]

Have not seen this video. 

But the main reason is that its for the 1st time in decade that , ppl who use to spot batting talent and promote and influence the section down the line have got it wrong so many time.

 

Pirthvi was seen as next big thing truned out to have so many technical issues

Gill before the Eng series he was avg ~35  in 35 matches

KL still avg 36-37 

 

 

Right now only Jaiswal is a batter with test avg. over 45, and only Gill (improved due to recent eng series) , Pant have test average above 40. Rest all the batters are below 40 and more near to 35.

How can a team win with this batting.

 

Yes bowling was not as good as SA bowling but how about batting.

 

[vvvslaxman]

3 minutes ago, tapandrun said:

Have not seen this video. 

But the main reason is that its for the 1st time in decade that , ppl who use to spot batting talent and promote and influence the section down the line have got it wrong so many time.

 

Pirthvi was seen as next big thing truned out to have so many technical issues

Gill before the Eng series he was avg ~35  in 35 matches

KL still avg 36-37 

 

 

Right now only Jaiswal is a batter with test avg. over 45, and only Gill (improved due to recent eng series) , Pant have test average above 40. Rest all the batters are below 40 and more near to 35.

How can a team win with this batting.

 

Yes bowling was not as good as SA bowling but how about batting.

 

You can't blame bowlers though fully. Saying Sundar, Jadeja, Kuldeep could not even bowl one peach of a delivery is unbelievable. Even poor spinners would bowl accidentallly a good ball on these tracks. Fact is SA batsmen looked so confident. THey applied themselves even in Pakistan.  There were guys like Stubbs who had no clue yet willing to grind it out. Ashwin's point is India failed to capitalize on bad balls from harmer which he dished out a lot. He used Sai Sudarshan's dismissal as an example. They get into a defensive mindset so much that when they see a terrible delivery they couldn't even put away.

[putrevus]

6 hours ago, Lord said:

 

Exactly. We were playing too many half batsmen

That falls on coaching and team selection. You cannot blame players.

[putrevus]

5 hours ago, tapandrun said:

Have not seen this video. 

But the main reason is that its for the 1st time in decade that , ppl who use to spot batting talent and promote and influence the section down the line have got it wrong so many time.

 

Pirthvi was seen as next big thing truned out to have so many technical issues

Gill before the Eng series he was avg ~35  in 35 matches

KL still avg 36-37 

 

 

Right now only Jaiswal is a batter with test avg. over 45, and only Gill (improved due to recent eng series) , Pant have test average above 40. Rest all the batters are below 40 and more near to 35.

How can a team win with this batting.

 

Yes bowling was not as good as SA bowling but how about batting.

 

I disagree, it is not like SA is loaded with batsmen averaging 50.

 

SA were 247/7 and India loaded with  pesudo allrounders who let their bowlers score more than 250 runs.

 

Team needs to have proper bowlers and batsman. You cannot make backup keeper be number 4 batsman and have pseudo allrounders who neither bat nor bowl.

[AKane]

10 hours ago, Lord said:

Kolkata was a flat deck. Maybe not 480 track but definitely 350-400 track. We scored only 200 first dig

Was that a typo? Did you mean Guwahati was a flat deck?

 

Kolkata was not a flat deck - It was not a 350 - 400 track either. When the four innings are scores of 159 189 153 93  amongst both sides - it is not a flat deck.

 

I think you meant Guwahati - yes the batters are responsible too.

 

However Harmer and Maharaj try to actually turn the ball. Indian spinners are used to the Kolkata like tracks where the pitch does the work for them. Besides Kuldeep I have rarely seen any spinner actually flight the ball. When a person like Jadeja gets wickets on indian pitches why should anyone bowl different? Jadeja averages 20.95 at home per wicket and 36.97 away from home.

 

See Harmer has to bowl on SA pitches and it is hard to extract spin there but he has to try.... then he did his Kolpak thingy and went to England and pitches there are not spin friendly either. But he still has to earn his salary. That is why he was more successful here at Guwahati.

 

BTW Jansen is still learning - he is only 25.

 

Edited December 2, 2025 by AKane

[vvvslaxman]

56 minutes ago, AKane said:

Was that a typo? Did you mean Guwahati was a flat deck?

 

Kolkata was not a flat deck - It was not a 350 - 400 track either. When the four innings are scores of 159 189 153 93  amongst both sides - it is not a flat deck.

 

I think you meant Guwahati - yes the batters are responsible too.

 

However Harmer and Maharaj try to actually turn the ball. Indian spinners are used to the Kolkata like tracks where the pitch does the work for them. Besides Kuldeep I have rarely seen any spinner actually flight the ball. When a person like Jadeja gets wickets on indian pitches why should anyone bowl different? Jadeja averages 20.95 at home per wicket and 36.97 away from home.

 

See Harmer has to bowl on SA pitches and it is hard to extract spin there but he has to try.... then he did his Kolpak thingy and went to England and pitches there are not spin friendly either. But he still has to earn his salary. That is why he was more successful here at Guwahati.

 

BTW Jansen is still learning - he is only 25.

 

 

Sundar batted with 88% control against spin in both tests. It required very good ball to get him. Our top orer failed against ordinary balls. So you have to question their defense. On the same track Bavuma played brilliantly.  This is your home turf. I bet a domestic team like Services, Vidarbha would have batted far better than our current Indian team. Remember 5  or 6 batsmen were bounced out by Jansen. They had no reason to lose wickets to him. IN the first innings Harmer was not effective. oNly in 4th innings typical red soil pitch would crack which helped Harmer.

Edited December 2, 2025 by vvvslaxman

[R!TTER]

1 hour ago, AKane said:

When a person like Jadeja gets wickets on indian pitches why should anyone bowl different? Jadeja averages 20.95 at home per wicket and 36.97 away from home.

And why is that? It isn't just because he's that "bad" - NZ pitches for instance are totally non conducive to spin, especially when Asian teams tour. You'd be shocked to see the difference from 2009/10 when we last won there followed by Pak the next year! Same goes for Eng but to a lesser extent. Jadeja had a great record in SA, albeit just one test, and he played what 5-6 tests in Oz without a loss? Till the last tour of course.

 

The point about home pitch tampering is relevant though, but you just have to go back to Chennai 2021 against Eng where everyone here wanted blood after the first test humiliation - lest you forget Pants/RGS & a few others throwing their wickets needlessly in the first innings! Then as the pitches started to turn you had ICF jizzing themselves over firangi 3 guna lagaan leke deke jayenge, same vs Oz in 2023 

 

You can't *in blame the retarded TM all the time when at least half the stupid *in janta wants the game to be over in 2 days+the opposition getting humiliated every time! Blame the IPL lovin dotards from here as well  

Edited December 2, 2025 by R!TTER

[tapandrun]

4 hours ago, putrevus said:

I disagree, it is not like SA is loaded with batsmen averaging 50.

 

SA were 247/7 and India loaded with  pesudo allrounders who let their bowlers score more than 250 runs.

 

Team needs to have proper bowlers and batsman. You cannot make backup keeper be number 4 batsman and have pseudo allrounders who neither bat nor bowl.

Was talking about the root cause of it, not this particular series. Ind already does not have high scoring batters and then they are adding and selecting make shift batters .

 

Sai , Sundar, Jurel are they even the best batters in their domestic teams let alone Ind side 

[tapandrun]

10 hours ago, vvvslaxman said:

You can't blame bowlers though fully. Saying Sundar, Jadeja, Kuldeep could not even bowl one peach of a delivery is unbelievable. Even poor spinners would bowl accidentallly a good ball on these tracks. Fact is SA batsmen looked so confident. THey applied themselves even in Pakistan.  There were guys like Stubbs who had no clue yet willing to grind it out. Ashwin's point is India failed to capitalize on bad balls from harmer which he dished out a lot. He used Sai Sudarshan's dismissal as an example. They get into a defensive mindset so much that when they see a terrible delivery they couldn't even put away.

Do not think Kuldeep+ Axar+Sundar +Jadeja can provide 20 wkts in test. Ind need both batters who can score big and bowlers who can ensure 20 wkts.

[vvvslaxman]

7 minutes ago, tapandrun said:

Do not think Kuldeep+ Axar+Sundar +Jadeja can provide 20 wkts in test. Ind need both batters who can score big and bowlers who can ensure 20 wkts.

 

You need a bit of scoreboard pressure. You can't do anything with sub par scores. Stubbs is a poor batsman against spin. Our batsmen couldn't even match him.

 

Pant averaged 12

Kela averaged 17

Jaiswal averaged 20

Jurel averaged 7.25

 

With GIll missing these numbers are terrible

 

Although i am against loading the side with all rounders it is the all rounders that scored bulk of India's runs

 

Sundar 124

Jadeja 105

Axar 42 (in 1 test)

 

 

 

 

 

[tapandrun]

1 minute ago, vvvslaxman said:

 

You need a bit of scoreboard pressure. You can't do anything with sub par scores. Stubbs is a poor batsman against spin. Our batsmen couldn't even match him.

 

Pant averaged 12

Kela averaged 17

Jaiswal averaged 20

Jurel averaged 7.25

 

With GIll missing these numbers are terrible

 

Although i am against loading the side with all rounders it is the all rounders that scored bulk of India's runs

 

Sundar 124

Jadeja 105

Axar 42 (in 1 test)

 

 

 

 

 

Yes batter failed badly. but Ind is now a team where both batting and bowling is an issue.

 

An argument is made that allrounders have scored more than pure batters, but in test we must remember that if a team scores 50 runs in total and if all 50 runs are scored by a no. 8/9/10 batter does not make them best batters in the side. Batters needs to score , need proper high scoring batters in top 6 in place of bit and pieces 

 

Yes develop some player but devlop them 1st at n0.6/7 same for allrounders 

[putrevus]

44 minutes ago, tapandrun said:

Was talking about the root cause of it, not this particular series. Ind already does not have high scoring batters and then they are adding and selecting make shift batters .

 

Sai , Sundar, Jurel are they even the best batters in their domestic teams let alone Ind side 

Exactly, you select best batsman and if they fail select other batsman. You don't fill roles of batsmen with pseduo allrounders.

 

 

[Lord]

2 hours ago, AKane said:

Was that a typo? Did you mean Guwahati was a flat deck?

 

Kolkata was not a flat deck - It was not a 350 - 400 track either. When the four innings are scores of 159 189 153 93  amongst both sides - it is not a flat deck.

 

I think you meant Guwahati - yes the batters are responsible too.

 

However Harmer and Maharaj try to actually turn the ball. Indian spinners are used to the Kolkata like tracks where the pitch does the work for them. Besides Kuldeep I have rarely seen any spinner actually flight the ball. When a person like Jadeja gets wickets on indian pitches why should anyone bowl different? Jadeja averages 20.95 at home per wicket and 36.97 away from home.

 

See Harmer has to bowl on SA pitches and it is hard to extract spin there but he has to try.... then he did his Kolpak thingy and went to England and pitches there are not spin friendly either. But he still has to earn his salary. That is why he was more successful here at Guwahati.

 

BTW Jansen is still learning - he is only 25.

 

 

yes sorry meant the 2nd Test.

 

What's wrong with Jadeja getting wickets on Indian pitches? Ojha used to bowl slow and supposedly 'turn the ball' but was ineffective on same damn pitches.

 

Let's see if Harmer's stule works against better players of spin like NZ,SL before making him a legend. If he was that great, he'd been playing ahead of Maharaj