Cricket Editorial IND v NZ Indian Cricket

IPL retention a red herring, when the real culprit is India getting trapped in a spin cycle

November 4, 2024
<a href="https://revsportz.in/author/boria/" rel="author" class="url fn n" itemprop="url"><img alt='' src='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e660b408ca5a915f1c718d0cd98a879b?s=32&d=mm&r=g' srcset='https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e660b408ca5a915f1c718d0cd98a879b?s=64&d=mm&r=g 2x' class='avatar avatar-32 photo' height='32' width='32' decoding='async'/> <span class="" itemprop="name">Boria Majumdar</span></a>
Ajaz Patel won the player of the match award (Image: BCCI)

Amid all the anger, the IPL is always a soft target. India have lost a home series – emphatically so – and hence it is time to blame the IPL. Blame the retention process, for that’s what must have occupied the players mind space’ before this Test. Nothing could be more wrong. Let’s deep dive to explore this a little.

For a second, assume that the IPL retention was on the players’ minds. The one who was deeply involved in the retention drama and who decided at the last to put himself into the auction was Rishabh Pant. And needless to say, Pant was India’s best batter by a country mile in Mumbai. Clearly, it wasn’t about retention or any such thing. Rohit Sharma’s retention was never in doubt. Mumbai had taken these calls weeks earlier, and never was there any doubt over it. The same can be said of Virat Kohli. That RCB would retain him was never up for debate, so to say his mind was on the retention is pure nonsense.

I would argue the same for Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill, who form the new core of India’s batting. And Sarfaraz Khan was never going to be retained, so he would also not have been influenced by the drama playing out in the background. To target the IPL retention is the easy way out. And by doing so, we are actually not addressing the elephant in the room.

Had it been retention, it was a short-term thing. Now that the retention is done, the problem should also be sorted. This series could be passed off as an aberration. The truth is, it isn’t. Rather, this series is further evidence that India’s Test match batting is in decline and needs urgent correction. And that’s not because of the IPL retentions.

 

The solution is staring us in the face. Prepare good batting wickets to get your confidence back. These slow turners or rank turners, however you want to describe them, aren’t helping. You are mentally scarred at the moment, and by repeating the same mistakes over and over again, you are only adding to your misery. And when such things start to happen, they always have a tendency to spiral out of control. Rohit won the toss in Bengaluru, and made a horrendous blunder in batting first. Then, in the next two, he did not win the toss and luck did not go his way either. His poor batting form did not help, and with each passing innings, things went from bad to worse.

Interestingly, India play the next 10 Tests away from home – five in Australia and five in England. In both cases, India don’t prepare the decks and it is good that there will not be focus on such issues. Rather, they will have to play on the surfaces that are on offer, and that might just bring Jasprit Bumrah into play.

Cricket is the most individual of all team sports, and that’s what India will need to bank on at the moment. Just like Ajinkya Rahane’s 116 in Melbourne in 2020, we need an inspirational effort from someone to make things happen. Sport always gives you a second chance, and now, the challenge for Rohit and Gautam Gambhir will be to forget this humiliation and move ahead. What’s done is done. The future is in their hands.