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The Indian team, traditionally known to be the team of batters who used to score centuries for fun has been struggling off-late to live up to its legacy. A testament to this statement is the fact that India alone houses 3 of the top 10 batters with the most Test centuries, which is the most for any nation among the top 10. Sachin Tendulkar, the man with the most Test hundreds, played 200 Tests in his career comprising 329 innings in his career and ended up scoring 51 Test hundreds, which means on average he used to score a ton in every 6.45 innings and 3.92 Tests.

What followed India's recent defeat in the World Test Championship (WTC) Final was another depressing scenario of unrest and chaos amongst the fans who have been craving for the Indian Cricket Team to lift another global title for a decade now.

Amidst all the talks of the Indian team not being prepared for such a big event due to the lack of preparation time as the cash-rich Indian Premier League (IPL) just got over approximately a week before the start of the WTC Final, the most crucial topic that went under the radar yet again was the inability of Indian batters to get big knocks under their belt in the longest format of the game.

Ever since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian batters have been found to be struggling to get big runs under their belt. Quite contrasting to what India's template has been over the decades, India has been reliant on their bowlers to win them games and the bowlers have raised their hands during virtually every opportunity that came their way barring the rescheduled 5th Test at the Edgbaston in July 2022. This is the major reason why India was comfortably able to book their berth for the WTC Final for the second consecutive time, the only side to be able to do so.

Quite like the rescheduled 5th Test the previous year, the Indian bowlers couldn't find momentum in the WTC Final for a one-off game in the longest format fresh after playing the shortest format in the IPL and the result was very similar. But the bigger question that arises for the Indian Test side is that it is not the responsibility of only their bowlers to win them games every time with the batters not contributing anywhere close to the team's cause.

In this column, we will have a deep dive-in at how Indian batters have fared collectively as well as individually with respect to the batters from the other sides.

LIST OF BATTERS TO SCORE A TON SINCE THE START OF 2020 SEASON

Among the 86 batters to score a ton in this period, only 11 are Indians namely:

MA Agarwal: 1 century

SS Iyer: 1 century

R Ashwin: 1 century

V Kohli: 1 century

AM Rahane: 1 century

CA Pujara: 1 century

RA Jadeja: 2 centuries

KL Rahul: 2 centuries

Shubman Gill: 2 centuries

RG Sharma: 3 centuries

RR Pant: 3 centuries

The combined Indian XI that took the field for the WTC Final had scored just 10 Test centuries in the last 3 years and with none of them being able to get into three figures during the WTC Final, India had to pay the heaviest price.

On the contrary, Joe Root alone boasts of 12 triple-figure scores in the same period, which is 2 more than the entire Indian XI combined that featured in the WTC Final.

A testament to Indian batters failing to get big innings under their belt has been given below in the data counted from the start of the 2020 season (April 2020) where we see the number of Tests played by each nation along with the number of centuries scored by the nation in total in this period and a ratio of the number of Tests played to the total number of centuries scored by the side:

As it is evident from the above, Indian batters fare only better than West Indies, Zimbabwe and South Africa in terms of their ability to get a big innings (century) under their belt. Among these three, only South Africa can be labelled as one of the top Test sides and India fares well below the likes of sides such as Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Ireland, etc. To the surprise of everyone, Sri Lanka jointly top the chart alongside New Zealand but Sri Lanka's undoing has come in a way exactly opposite to India's, with their bowlers not being able to complement their batters.

There also have been 22 double-centuries registered during this period, none of which have come from an Indian batter. 

LIST OF DOUBLE-CENTURIES SCORED SINCE THE START OF 2020 SEASON

PS: No triple-century has been recorded during this period.

India boasts the presence of just one batter in the top 10 of ICC Test Batsmen Rankings where Rishabh Pant sits exactly at the 10th position, who was unavailable for the WTC Final due to injury.

Among those who have played 10 innings or more, only 31 batters average 40 or over in this period of which only a mere 3 happen to be Indians, with none of them featuring in the top 15. The detailed list is given below:

HIGHEST INDIVIDUAL BATTING AVERAGES (SINCE APRIL 2020)

All of the above data collectively clearly states that India have been way below par with the bat off-late and they need to work on it starting from the upcoming two-Test away series against the Windies if they wish to turn things around in a fresh WTC cycle which could potentially turn out to be the toughest for them till date considering the two away tours in Australia and South Africa along with the task of facing the English Bazball challenge at home that awaits them in the current WTC cycle.