NEW DELHI: After the Indian team had departed Australia following an ultimately disappointing series, the management had a sufficient in tray with respect to the batting unit. Have conversations with Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. Find the best position for KL Rahul. Work out Shreyas Iyer's immediate red-ball future. Identify Shubman Gill's position in the line-up. It was, in essence, going to be a highwire act, returning the block of a shaky jenga to its starting position.
Fast forward 10 months later and it's safe to say that they have managed to solve most of the issues. Yashasvi Jaiswal has found a permanent opener in Rahul, Gill has seamlessly slotted into that role previously occupied by Kohli, Rishabh Pant or Dhruv Jurel have walked in at No. 5 with the spinning all-rounders following them.
They lost Sharma and Kohli — over 180 Tests and 13,500 runs between the pair of them just before the away series of England — but the team hasn't really missed them over the course of the last six games. Gill, the new captain, has made a mountain of runs at No. 4 and that has certainly helped as its such a crucial position.
With a noticeable uptick in Rahul's batting fortunes (an average of 42.29 since 2024; a jump of 6.3 runs per innings on his lifetime average), the jigsaw is falling into place.
For a period of time, it seemed like there would be a significant churn but this experiment is something that hasn't curdled. Over the last few years, India have handed debuts to Rajat Patidar, B Sai Sudharsan, Devdutt Padikkal, Suryakumar Yadav, Sarfaraz Khan and Jaiswal apart from responding to the sheer ton of runs Karun Nair scored in domestic cricket with a call-up. And not to mention Abhimanyu Easwaran, the reserve opener whose time may have come and gone.
Apart from Jaiswal who has cemented his spot at the top, the others are all fighting for, at best, one spot in the team. It's also probably why the transition has been this seamless; the answer has come from those already within the team. Rahul has found a new and permanent home, Gill has taken the same journey but in reverse and Jurel's excellence with the bat has meant the management hasn't needed to compromise on the team balance and composition. Sure, Jurel and Pant are different batters but the former's presence doesn't accentuate the absence of the latter.
This is borne out in the increase of the average of India's batting unit as a whole compared to both 2023 and 2024. In the first year in question, they averaged 30.9. In 2024, that dropped to 29.27. This year, it's swelled to 37.55. The one obvious caveat is the nature of the pitches and the conditions but that shouldn't take away that the batting unit has been in a better place than it used to be in 2024. The 100s count are also up, it's a flawed count to measure batting success of a team but the sport does lend itself favourably to individual milestones. In 2023, the team, between them, managed seven 100s in eight matches. Seven doubled to 14 in 2024 but there were 15 matches. This year, the batting unit are averaging almost two 100s per Test, the sign of a healthy unit.
It could be set for a further boost because Gill and the current management may lean towards pitches where bat has more of a say.
"I can't speak about the conversations before I came, but we would be looking to play on wickets that offer (something) to both the batsmen and to the bowlers," Gill had said before the first Test in Ahmedabad. "But, having said that, any team that comes to India, the challenge is the spin and reverse swing. These are the two things that, if teams can play spin well and if they can challenge the reverse swing, they are going to get good success. So keeping these challenges in mind, you'd be looking to play on wickets that offer (something) to the batsmen and the bowlers."
With three more Tests lined up in less than two months, don't be surprised if the batting unit continues to make the best use of the purple patch they are currently on.
India's batting numbers
Metrics 2023 2024 2025
Players used 22 24 18
Matches 8 15 7
Average 30.96 29.27 37.55
100s 7 14 15