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A win against Bangladesh in the first Test of the upcoming two-match series will bring a historic moment for India. If Rohit Sharma & Co manage to put it across the visitors, India’s wins in Test cricket will outumber the defeats for the first time ever.
India have so far played 579 Tests. The wins and losses from these matches are currently tied at 178 each, while 222 matches ended as draws and one was tied.
A victory in Chennai will make it 179 wins and 178 defeats for India in red-ball cricket.
The special achievement in the offing makes one flip the pages of Indian cricket history backwards in an effort to analyze when the trend started to change.
Termed as ‘lions at home, lambs abroad’ in the past, India had a dismal record overseas, which kept the number of defeats more than wins.
Looking at the Test captaincy statistics of Mohammad Azharuddin, Sourav Ganguly, MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli, a relatively fair assessment can be gauged through comparison of the records of Dhoni and Kohli, who were at the helm of India’s Test team for the longest duration.
Before the turn of the century and for a short period after that as well, the win-loss ratio for India in Tests was heavily in favour of the losses.
While Rahul Dravid remains the last India captain to win a Test series in England (2007), the noticeable consistent improvement in India’s performance in red-ball matches, both at home and overseas, started under Dhoni and went a notch higher under Kohli. However, Rohit Sharma’s win percentage (62.5%) in 16 Tests as captain is the highest.
But if the comparison benchmark were to be set at 60 matches, then only Dhoni and Kohli come under that bracket. Dhoni became the Test captain in 2008 while Kohli took over towards the end of 2014.
Azharuddin is third in that list with 47 Tests as captain.
* Mohammad Azharuddin – 47 Tests (14 wins)
* Sourav Ganguly – 28 Tests (11 wins)
* MS Dhoni – 60 Tests (27 wins)
* Virat Kohli – 67 Tests (40 wins)
* Rohit Sharma – 16 Tests (9 wins)
The above numbers give clarity on where India started winning more often in Test cricket. What Dhoni started under his leadership, Virat took forward, including India’s first Test series win on Australian soil.
So the impact was clearly during Kohli’s captaincy, even though his win percentage in Tests (58.82%) remains behind Rohit’s (62.5%).
That aside, Virat ushered the trend of winning Test matches with pace attacks that put India’s Test aspirations and impact on a different pedestal.
Technically, if any captain single-handedly changed India’s image of historically relying on a spin-heavy attack, it was Virat’s decision to put together a pace battery (alongside former coach Ravi Shastri) that changed things forever.
So, no catalyst served Indian cricket better than the decision to usher in the fast-bowling trend. And that credit solely lies with Virat as far as India’s Test captaincy is concerned.
India have so far played 579 Tests. The wins and losses from these matches are currently tied at 178 each, while 222 matches ended as draws and one was tied.
A victory in Chennai will make it 179 wins and 178 defeats for India in red-ball cricket.
The special achievement in the offing makes one flip the pages of Indian cricket history backwards in an effort to analyze when the trend started to change.
Termed as ‘lions at home, lambs abroad’ in the past, India had a dismal record overseas, which kept the number of defeats more than wins.
Looking at the Test captaincy statistics of Mohammad Azharuddin, Sourav Ganguly, MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli, a relatively fair assessment can be gauged through comparison of the records of Dhoni and Kohli, who were at the helm of India’s Test team for the longest duration.
Before the turn of the century and for a short period after that as well, the win-loss ratio for India in Tests was heavily in favour of the losses.
While Rahul Dravid remains the last India captain to win a Test series in England (2007), the noticeable consistent improvement in India’s performance in red-ball matches, both at home and overseas, started under Dhoni and went a notch higher under Kohli. However, Rohit Sharma’s win percentage (62.5%) in 16 Tests as captain is the highest.
But if the comparison benchmark were to be set at 60 matches, then only Dhoni and Kohli come under that bracket. Dhoni became the Test captain in 2008 while Kohli took over towards the end of 2014.
Azharuddin is third in that list with 47 Tests as captain.
* Mohammad Azharuddin – 47 Tests (14 wins)
* Sourav Ganguly – 28 Tests (11 wins)
* MS Dhoni – 60 Tests (27 wins)
* Virat Kohli – 67 Tests (40 wins)
* Rohit Sharma – 16 Tests (9 wins)
The above numbers give clarity on where India started winning more often in Test cricket. What Dhoni started under his leadership, Virat took forward, including India’s first Test series win on Australian soil.
So the impact was clearly during Kohli’s captaincy, even though his win percentage in Tests (58.82%) remains behind Rohit’s (62.5%).
That aside, Virat ushered the trend of winning Test matches with pace attacks that put India’s Test aspirations and impact on a different pedestal.
Technically, if any captain single-handedly changed India’s image of historically relying on a spin-heavy attack, it was Virat’s decision to put together a pace battery (alongside former coach Ravi Shastri) that changed things forever.
So, no catalyst served Indian cricket better than the decision to usher in the fast-bowling trend. And that credit solely lies with Virat as far as India’s Test captaincy is concerned.
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