Long Innings: A post covid struggle for Indian batsmen?

Yashasvi Jaiswal’s double century against England in the second test was the first by an Indian batter in the post covid era. This period of almost 5 years has yielded just one double century for India to go along with only 6 long innings scores in excess of 150 (before the 3rd test match).

And this was what got me thinking about the title. Have the Indian batsmen somehow forgotten the art of scoring big runs or playing long innings? Is this a worldwide phenomenon?

In this article, I’ve decided to go in depth to analyse the question at hand while also drawing comparisons, understanding trends and looking at some obvious reasons that have led to this scenario playing out.

For the average cricket nerd, I promise that what I present will most definitely spark some curiosity in you and I hope this challenges your cricket sense and causes that excitement or aha moment! So let’s get right into it!

Is a century not a long innings?

Something that always seems to be talked about after any game of cricket is a particular batter’s knock. It could be the star batter or a batter who was anchoring the chase or was set and seemed ready for a big one before being dismissed cheaply.

Our human nature always gets us to speculate on what would have happened had a certain player batted till the end or scored at a quicker clip etc.

My most recent thoughts go to the first test between India & England where three Indian batsmen were dismissed in the 80s! Imagine conversion to a century and beyond for even one of them! It could have been a very different reading and possibly result too.
The difference between the teams at the end of the day was Ollie Pope’s mammoth 196 that put the English in driving seat.

In a format such as tests where time is ample and patience is the greatest of all virtues – can batsmen just not hang in there a little longer and a little longer and just push themselves to keep going? We’ve seen the Laras, Haydens, Dravids, Warners, Clarkes – all notch up huge scores in their own unique styles.

So, by no means is it impossible but it does require a certain class. Just to make it clear – in no way am I taking away the fact that you still need to be bloody good to score a century in test cricket. But it is something worth thinking about.

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Crunching Indian numbers

Now coming to the statistical side of things, here are some numbers that I thought might help paint a better picture. When it comes to playing long innings, the Indians have generally done well to score big daddy hundreds and in recent memory, the likes of Pujara, Kohli and Agarwal consistently notched up large tons for India.

I pulled out numbers for 34 test matches played by India both pre and post covid and they make for some interesting discourse.

As can be seen, India’s batters were only able to cross 150 a mere 6 times post covid as opposed to 13 times pre covid for the same number of test matches (34). That is a 53% decrease in scores of 150 or more and you can understand why it would be a cause for some concern given the rise of shorter formats across the world!

But is it really that black and white? Absolutely not. There are so many things that need to be taken into account before understanding or concluding that this really is the issue or not. Right off the top of my head, we can look into the following stats:

1) How did the opposition batters fare in these particular Indian games?

2) How have batsmen around the world fared in this post covid era?

1) How opposition batters fared in the Indian games when playing long innings?

This is probably the best way to understand whether or not the conditions were just a lot tougher to score in or not. The readings are as follows:

In these 34 test matches spanning from December of 2020, the Indian batsmen managed to score 23 centuries whereas the opposition batsmen in these same matches scored 18 centuries. Yet, the number of 150+ scores is the same!

This means that the Indians did, to some extent, struggle to convert their centuries into bigger, more substantial scores but also can be a pointer to the fact that there were more team efforts as opposed to reliance on individuals, because remember that during the later half of this period the likes of Pujara and Rahane did not score much and Kohli too had gone through a rough patch where they did not play too many long innings.

To put it across as percentages, the Indians showed a conversion rate of about 26.08% vs 33.33% for the opposition batters!

In addition to this, there were several instances where Indian batters were dismissed or left stranded in the 80s and 90s – most notably Rishabh Pant & Shreyas Iyer.
And on the opposition side of things, there were quite a few games where batters remained not out on a score beyond 100 but less than 150.

2) How batters around the world have fared post covid when it comes to long innings?

It seemed worthwhile to explore whether this dip in conversions was an Indian batting phenomenon or something also faced across nations.

I pulled out numbers for Australia, England, New Zealand & South Africa for this same post covid period. They are as follows:

This table really puts things into some perspective. With Joe Root & Kane Williamson being in amazing form, it definitely has contributed to England & New Zealand scoring several 150+ scores.

Australia have done decently and while Steve Smith has not done much besides a single double hundred, the Aussie batters have still scored big and all contributed at crucial junctures. This also correlates with the fantastic run that Australia had in the previous WTC test cycle.

Another factor that stood out was the insane conversion rate of the Kiwis. They converted 150+ scores into double hundreds at a rate of 72.7% – the highest for any team during this period!

This however, paints a decent picture around the state of long innings by Indian batsmen and there are mainly 2 reasons that have contributed to this in my opinion.

1) India are in the midst of a transition phase

2) There are no test specialists in the current Indian team

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