It was September 2016 when India started its long home season when they played a test series against New Zealand and since then India has only played a single test series outside their home turf which was against Srilanka in Srilanka but no series outside Asia.
During this tenure team India has beaten teams like Australia, England, New Zealand and Bangladesh on Indian soil and reached the top spot in ICC test ranking for test matches. India has always been treated as power house when it comes to playing cricket at their own backyard.
Mostly when playing in India opposition teams came across rank turners and docile pitches which suits Indian spinners big time and Indian batting pile up some big totals to sent the opposition out of the game; but for the first time in last one year Indian think thank opt for greener pitch to test their batsman out and they failed miserably. Some more woes added by over cast conditions at Eden garden Kolkata. Not many times you see India loosing half of their side for 50 odd runs. Main stays of Indian batting KL Rahul, Shikar Dhawan, Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane wasn’t able to cope with seam and swing of Sri Lankan bowling. Only Chateshwar Pujara showed some fight by scoring a gritty fifty in first innings to save face for India.
India may have opted for bowling conducive pitch by keeping in mind their upcoming tour of South Africa where their batsman would come across some fiery pace bowling against the likes of Steyn, Morkel, Rabbada and Oliver; and to show the world that their much hyped batsman are not home track bullies they need to adapt on different type of pitches.
Team which amassed big runs more than often in docile Indian pitches fell apart in their first test against the mediocre Sri Lankan bowling which is yet to gain some reputation in cricket arena. Is it the effect of playing on home too much that didn’t help the Indian cause or its just their batsman are not good enough to score big runs in bowling friendly pitches, only time will tell.
