I know that a lot has been written and more will be written by the time the Guwahati Test is over. Even if India is able to scrape through with a draw, it does not take a Feluda to decipher that there is a systemic problem here. From my three decades as a corporate practitioner, the analogy that I can bring to the table is the “Icarus Paradox” — organisations or teams that fail precisely because of the strengths that once propelled them!
Consider one of the most-cited business failures: Enron Corporation. Once lauded as innovator and high-flying, it spectacularly collapsed, despite enormous scale and apparent dominance due to structural, cultural and governance failures. How do the parallels line up?
Consider this from a cricket perspective: The Indian top-order batters repeatedly failed to set up the innings. It’s an example of inability to stabilise the batting order. How does one even begin to explain Washington Sundar at No. 3 at Eden Gardens and No. 8 in Guwahati? Specific weakness in countring spin becomes a vulnerability that is clearly being exploited by the opposition. There is structural imbalance also, in terms of too many all-rounders and the absence of specialist batters.
This is akin to core business units under-performing in a corporate scenario, perhaps resulting in fundamental revenue generation being put to risk. Similarly, unable or slow to respond to changing market conditions. Too much diversification and wrong resource mix compound the miseries.
There is a growing sense that this is an unsettled dressing room under a coach still searching for ideological clarity in red-ball cricket. The same group that punched above its weight in English conditions now appears curiously disoriented on supposedly familiar home surfaces. The continuity of personnel only sharpens the contrast: This is not a team short on talent, but one caught between philosophies.
Too much white-ball logic seems to be bleeding into Test-match thinking — urgency replacing patience, flexibility substituting for structure. Gautam Gambhir’s India, in that sense, appears to be “seeing white but feeling red”: operating with the instincts of limited-over cricket while playing a format that demands time, rhythm and psychological anchoring.
The preference for all-rounders over specialists is a telling symptom. Axar Patel slotted as a fourth spinner and batting all-round option ahead of a pure batter like Sai Sudharsan in the previous Test reflects a mindset that values balance over solidity …a hallmark of white-ball strategy where depth is essential, but potentially damaging in Tests where first-innings runs remain the bedrock of control.
Similarly, the recurring obsession with left-right combinations in the batting order mirrors ODI and T20 logic, where disrupting bowling rhythms is critical, but in Test cricket can often come at the cost of stability and role clarity.
Most revealing, however, is the lack of a settled No. 3. Historically, it’s a position of trust, technique and temperament. The constant chopping and changing suggests not just tactical experimentation but an underlying uncertainty about identity. Who anchors? Who absorbs pressure when the new ball talks?
Without fixed roles and a defined batting hierarchy, even the most talented line-up begins to resemble a revolving door rather than a spine. The result is a team technically gifted but strategically conflicted, one that risks diluting its strongest format by trying to retrofit it with the sensibilities of its loudest, most lucrative one.
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