It’s been two and a half years since the last Test at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, when India defeated Australia by six wickets. So much has changed in Indian cricket since February 2023; only four members of that XI are in the squad for the West Indies Tests. Shubman Gill, the new skipper, didn’t play then, while Rohit Sharma, the then captain, has walked away into the Test sunset alongside fellow stalwarts Virat Kohli, Cheteshwar Pujara and R Ashwin.
Jadeja’s heroics in 2023
One of the heroes of that victory against Pat Cummins’s side was Ravindra Jadeja, whose handy contribution 26 in the first innings was shaded by a 10-wicket match haul, including seven for 42 in the second innings when the Aussies went from 82 for two to 113 all out in the bat of an eyelid. A raging turner that got progressively worse as the game wore on was exploited expertly by spinners from both sides, India’s greater depth carrying the day as the visitors laboured to unearth meaningful support for Nathan Lyon.
A square turner doesn’t appear on the cards for the second Test against West Indies, starting on Friday. The surface in Ahmedabad was true with an unprecedented four millimetres of grass bringing the faster bowlers into play on Day One, when Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj took seven wickets. From the red soil of Gujarat, the teams will pit their wares on a black-soil strip with uneven tufts of grass dotting different areas of the 22-yard pitch.
After a couple of days of R&R, the teams got down to business on Wednesday, with the rain mercifully staying away and the pre-winter sun shining down benevolently. The outfield was a mess and the usual ‘nets’ weren’t used for practice. But the facility that was made available was up to scratch, West Indies having a purposeful outing in the morning and India filling their boots in the afternoon when the pacers went full tilt and the spinners wheeled away without assistance.
Much has been said of West Indies’s dramatic decline as a cricketing force and Daren Sammy, the coach, conceded that much work remained ahead of him and his boys if they were to start to compete consistently with the bigger boys. The two-time T20 World Cup-winning captain revealed that ‘honest conversations’ had been the order of the day after the two-and-a-half-day battering last week in Ahmedabad.
WI lack confidence: Sammy
“I see that some of the guys lack confidence. Our problems don’t lie on the surface. It’s rooted deep in our system,” he acknowledged. “But I thought honestly, just the way we practised today, I saw a difference. They made a conscious effort out there.”
Sammy has challenged his wards to look inwards, at themselves, instead of looking at the man next to them to see what they could do better. If even half his passion and commitment to the cause rubs off on his players, they could salvage something — pride? — over the next week.