Opinion The Third Edit: How India lost its 12-year Test streak

As amazing as India’s 12-year-long unbroken Test series win run at home was, the end came with an unremarkable whimper. No last-instance twitching of the arms, no kicking of the legs. Just a tame surrender without a fight. It signifies that the team which was slowly heading towards a transition and was hopeful of getting there in a year’s time at the end of the world Test cycle in 2025, is forced to consider crossing that bridge now. Indian cricket now faces a question: What exactly is their home advantage?

The streak at home, though, was amazing. Especially when you consider a world that has been shrunk by the IPL. As a cricketing bastion, India doesn’t hold any more mysteries, the proverbial heat and dust has long transformed into stories of success and stardom, and to have had this run was quite an accomplishment. Especially if you take into account that Australia have been repeatedly humbled at their home by India twice, England don’t really hold home advantage either, yielding the last Ashes at their own territory, and South Africa too don’t guard their fortress as fiercely.

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What this loss signifies is, however, something more significant. India’s cricket identity is at stake: Are they a good spin-playing team of batsmen with venomous spinners? Do they have great young pace talent, considering Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami are closer to the end than they are to the start of their careers? The honest answer is “no” to both those questions. You have to go back to the 80s to find a similarity. That decade came to be known for India’s good “away” record, but a lack of consistently good spinners meant they were repeatedly humbled at home. But they had the batsmen to tackle spin and so started the ‘90s with a burst of designer-spin tracks under Mohammad Azharuddin’s captaincy. Even the start of this latest 12-year run was similar: A spin-heavy twist applied by Ravi Shastri coached-teams before they settled down. But with modern-day Indian batsmen no longer possessing that spin-skill, India have to now find a new way out of the rut.