South Africa’s Keshav Maharaj and Simon Harmer celebrate after the first Test win agains India at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata. (PTI)
Monty Panesar in 2012. Steve O’Keefe in 2017. Pairing of Matthew Kuhnemann and Nathan Lyon in 2023. Mitchell Santner and Ajaz Patel in 2024. And as Simon Harmer picked eight wickets in the first Test at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata, the hypothesis that India have issues against spin, at home, was solidified.The reasons for this are suggested to be multi-fold. First and foremost is that India are just not good players of spin. “We are not the best players of spin going around in the world at this point in time. Most Western teams are better than India now because they come to India, they practice it a lot more, but we don’t practice enough of it,” said R Ashwin.
Going hand-in-hand with that is the fact that not a lot of India’s Test squad regulars play domestic cricket when opportunity presents itself. Former India batter Sunil Gavaskar has time and again advocated for return to domestic cricket. BCCI, too, has urged contracted players to make themselves available for domestic cricket unless there is a fitness concern.Ex-South Africa cricketer Jonty Rhodes agrees that not playing enough domestic cricket could be the reason behind the Test team’s struggles against spin. “Maybe they’re not playing enough in spinning conditions. If I watch some state cricket in India, there’s some great performers with the bat and we know that the surfaces at state level are fairly similar (to the Test matches),” he told TimesofIndia.com exclusively on the sidelines of the FICCI Turf 2025 in New Delhi.“From an Indian conditions point of view, they’re not conditioned, because they’re playing so much international cricket, or even the different formats of the game, where we know in T20 and 50 overs, it’s a good batting surface, and they’re not tested from a spin point of view or skill wise, so that’s possibly it.”
With regards to rotation, rest and recovery, the Indian team is the one team that everybody wants to play against.
Jonty Rhodes
After India suffered a rare home Test series loss against New Zealand last year and also suffered against Australia Down Under, BCCI issued a set of guidelines. One of the 10 points required the players to have domestic cricket involvement. But can it be made mandatory, especially with a busy calendar as it is? Rhodes said finding a balance is important.“I got criticised when I missed a game in South Africa way back in 2000s, where there wasn’t that much cricket. It happened to transpire that it was a busy year for the first time, because we were touring England in the winter, and I took a game off, and there was much consternation in the media that I’m not playing for my state,” said the South African Rhodes.
South Africa’s Simon Harmer took 8 wickets against India in the first Test at the Eden Gardens. (PTI)
“I don’t know if you can enforce it,” said Rhodes on whether the guideline can be made mandatory. “Because with regards to rotation, rest and recovery, the Indian team is the one team that everybody wants to play against.”“Sometimes they have three different teams and three different formats, but sometimes the players cross over, and it’s tough to say, okay, ‘you’ve got a week off, go play a four-day state game’, but it’s ideal conditions-wise, conditioning-wise, it’s a great place to go for an international player to go play some cricket, but how do you make that mandatory? That’s the challenge. Because you’ll have some people who require a break, and then fingers will be pointed, and so it’s difficult to make everybody happy,” added Rhodes who played 52 Tests and 245 ODIs for South Africa scoring 8467 runs.
Home advantage is not just about the surface; home advantage is also what’s happening in the stands
Jonty Rhodes
Another facet that needs to be considered in this debate are the surfaces which is an extension of an even larger issue in Indian cricket – lack of fixed Test centres. Unlike England, Australia and South Africa, BCCI have taken the game to different parts of the country but diluted their ability to create a foothold at certain stadiums.“Home advantage is not just about the surface; home advantage is also what’s happening in the stands, so when you’ve got crowd support on your side, that is a big part of home advantage. I understand your point with regards to South Africa – we have 4 or 5 Test venues so when players go play a Test match in Durban or Pretoria or Johannesburg, Cape Town, they know what the surface is going to be, they can prepare, the batting surfaces and the nets are going to be exactly the same as what you would get in the middle, and maybe that is a difference.“But if you’re a country like India that has this passion and love for cricket across the country, it’s very difficult to say that these are the only Test venues or international venues that we’re going to have, because you want to grow cricket,” finished Rhodes.
