India vs Bangladesh: How record-breaking India redefined its Test game in 2019 and reached unimaginable heights

India – the country of, for and by spin; a team which, through the ages, often fielded attacks with minimal, if not zero, pacers; the pioneers of the term ‘military medium’ in the jargons of fast-bowling. That team, and that country, has ended a year with its pacers – now legitimately called just that; no fast-medium/medium-fast/military-medium, just plain-and-simple ‘fast’ – having accounted for 95 wickets in eight matches, at an average of 15.16, and a strike rate of 31.1 A wicket every 31 balls  — that’s the best combined rate for any team’s fast bowlers in any calendar year, with a caveat of a minimum of 50 wickets. 15 runs per each dismissal — that’s the second-best combined average for any team’s fast bowlers in any calendar, with the same caveat. This shouldn’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This is happening. [caption id=“attachment_7694721” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Virat Kohli gestures to spectators as he leads his team in a victory lap after winning the second Test. AP[/caption] And look at what it’s done: Seven wins in a row – India’s longest winning streak in Tests. Seven declarations in a row – a first in Test history. Four innings wins in a row – another first in Test history. Seven wins out of seven in the ongoing Test season, since the start of the World Test Championship cycle. The WTC standings? India: 360 points from seven matches. All others combined: 292 points from 23 matches. Their only other Test this year, also the only Test they failed to win this year, came with its own slice of historical pie – a draw in Sydney to help seal a first-ever Test series win Down Under. In eight Tests this year, India only needed to bat 11 times – and on only two occasions did their opponents manage to dismiss them. They averaged 59 runs per wicket. The 15 times India were in the field (not counting the four overs Australia batted in their second innings at Sydney as the game petered out), they took all available wickets – nine times out of 15, the opposition was bowled out for less than 200; there were a further three instances of teams being dismissed for scores below 225. They conceded 20 runs per wicket. Lots of numbers? Sample a few more. There’s a picture waiting to come together at the end of it, and be assured, it’s worth the wait. In the seven Tests since Sydney, India’s margins of victory read thus: 318 runs, 257 runs, 203 runs, an innings and 137 runs, an innings and 202 runs, an innings and 130 runs, an innings and 46 runs. In the five Tests they played at home, India averaged 69.07 with the bat – their highest in any calendar year at home – and 20.65 with the ball (their third-lowest figure in any year with more than three Tests at home). That gave them an average differential of 48.42 – by far the greatest such tally ever recorded by an Indian team in a year. The previous best mark? 36.85. When did that happen? 2018. So in two successive years, there has been a gulf of more than 36 runs, per wicket, in the average of what India score and what all of their opponents score. All of these stats are really good. But how do you truly test a period of dominance? How do you rank it? Measuring it with the golden standard(s) would be a start. So let’s take a look at the two greatest setups known to Test-kind: West Indies from the ‘70s and ‘80s, and Australia from the late ‘90s and the noughties. Putting together each of the seasons played by both teams in their corresponding decades, there is only one season where any of the two teams’ average differential at home is higher than any of India’s marks from the last two seasons: that’s Australia’s barely-believable difference of 69.22 in 2003, a season where they played only two home Tests, both of which came against a Bangladesh side three years into Test cricket. Leave that aside, and through a 25-year sample for the great West Indian generation, and a 20-year sample of Australian domination, there is only one season where any of the two teams even managed an average differential of 30 (32.59 for Australia in 2004/05). The next-highest differences for Australia, through that era, read as follows: 26.42 in 2006/07, 25.06 in 1993/94, 23.26 in 1999/00. For West Indies, in their time-period, the highest differentials are 23.38 in 1983/84 and 21.52 in 1985/86, apart from which there is no year where the difference stood at above 20. Now put into context the efforts of this Indian side led by Virat Kohli – in eight home Tests since the start of 2018, they average 62.72 with bat and 19.32 with ball. Sure, the favoured line of argument for the detractors is the weakness of opposition. There was a Test against Afghanistan, and these two against Bangladesh. But the other five games were against a West Indies lineup that would decimate England only a few months later, and a South African side that entered India ranked third in the world. In this particular season, every metric there is points to undisputed superiority. India hit nine centuries (four of which were double tons) to South Africa and Bangladesh’s combined tally of two. India’s average score at the fall of the fifth wicket was 425, while their opponents, on average, found themselves five-down for 87. India’s pacers averaged 15.25, and took a wicket every 30 deliveries; the corresponding figures for the South African and Bangladeshi pace attacks were 51.21 and 89, respectively. The pace attack, we just keep coming back to it, don’t we? You’d think enough has been said and written about them, but can there be enough? Can we wax enough eloquence on the heroics of Messrs Sharma, Yadav, Shami and Bumrah over this year? We can’t, but we’ll save the poetry for another time. For now, dwell on this: Of the five home Tests India played in 2019, only one went into the final day. The maximum possible allotment for this home season of five Tests, going by 90 overs a day, would have been 2250 overs. The five games, all told, took 1351.4 overs to reach completion. India required only 60% of the total allotted overs to complete five Test wins – by margins of 203 runs, an innings and 137 runs, an innings and 202 runs, an innings and 130 runs, and an innings and 46 runs. Let that sink. Let this record-breaking, history-rewriting unit continue to swim, in its triumphs of power and quest of perfection. This shouldn’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This is happening.