I enjoyed India’s home series against West Indies, but enjoyment is not the same as reassurance. The scorecard can tell us who won; it cannot tell us whether Test cricket is being protected. The tour, catalogued on ESPNcricinfo’s series page, offered familiar pleasures: fields shifting around a batter, spinners constructing dismissals and sessions whose meaning emerged slowly. It also felt like an heirloom displayed briefly before administrators returned it to storage.
The BCCI will point to fixtures, crowds and broadcast reach. I will point to the hierarchy revealed by the calendar. White-ball competitions receive long promotional runways and immaculate scheduling. Tests are fitted around the commercial furniture, then praised ceremonially. We are told the format is precious by people whose decisions repeatedly make it precarious. If this sounds harsh after an Indian victory, that is precisely when the subject should be raised. Defeat should not be the only condition under which structure becomes discussable.
A result can conceal a weak contest
West Indies remain one of cricket’s most resonant names, but nostalgia cannot restore resources, first-class depth or preparation time. A series becomes meaningful when touring players can adapt, when conditions test both teams and when defeat carries lessons rather than inevitability. Short preparation and compressed tours may satisfy a contractual requirement while producing cricket too predictable to deepen the format.
India’s superiority at home is earned. Our spin resources, batting experience and domestic talent are formidable. Yet I want victories that reveal excellence, not merely the economic distance between boards. Test cricket needs strong opponents, and the richest board has an interest in helping create them. Revenue-sharing debates are not acts of charity; they concern the quality of India’s own product. A champion eventually suffers when the league around it weakens.
The standard defence is that the BCCI cannot solve another board’s governance. True. It can, however, support longer tours, meaningful warm-ups, India A exchanges and financial arrangements that make red-ball participation less punishing. It can use its influence at the ICC to favour competitive balance. Power is not absolved by pointing out that responsibility is distributed.
The domestic game needs more than reverence
Every discussion of Indian Tests eventually reaches the Ranji Trophy, where administrators perform reverence and players confront logistics. The tournament remains an extraordinary talent system, but visibility, scheduling and pitch standards vary. Domestic specialists can spend years mastering difficult conditions while earning a fraction of what one successful franchise season promises. I do not begrudge T20 cricketers their income. I question a system that expects red-ball devotion to survive largely as personal virtue.
The BCCI’s own website maintains domestic fixtures, but publishing a schedule is the beginning of stewardship, not its completion. Matches need reliable streaming, coherent promotion, adequate recovery time, independent pitch assessment and selection pathways that do not treat domestic volume as background noise. Supporters should be able to follow a season without becoming unpaid archivists.
I would create clearer red-ball contracts for a wider pool, reward sustained Ranji excellence and schedule India A tours as a permanent programme. I would also stop pretending that every international player can be available for every format without consequence. Workload management becomes credible only when rested players are directed toward the form of cricket supposedly being protected, rather than simply appearing fresh for the most lucrative engagement.
Pitches should produce stories, not alibis
Home advantage is legitimate. England prepares seam, Australia bounce and India spin. But there is a difference between conditions with a pronounced character and surfaces that make batting technique nearly irrelevant. A good Indian pitch should ask whether a batter can use feet, read trajectory and survive pressure. It should also permit a set batter to score. When deterioration is immediate and random, the match becomes shorter but not necessarily richer.
The temptation is commercial as well as competitive. A quick home win protects rankings and reduces risk. Yet repeated abbreviated Tests teach spectators that a five-day ticket is a hypothetical product. Broadcasters may celebrate dramatic wickets, but narrative needs resistance. The finest sessions I remember contain not constant event but accumulating possibility: a partnership that alters a field, a spell that changes tempo, a batter who earns the right to attack.
India have enough talent to win on balanced pitches. Preparing them would develop batters for overseas tours and make spinners work through plans rather than surface assistance alone. It might occasionally produce a draw or, heaven forbid, a home defeat. A strong cricket culture should tolerate both. Invulnerability is less interesting than excellence tested honestly.
The calendar reveals what speeches hide
Administrators routinely say fans no longer possess patience. I find this diagnosis convenient. Supporters watch long franchise seasons, follow transfer gossip for months and spend hours consuming highlights, analysis and fantasy games. Attention has not vanished; it has been organised elsewhere. Give Tests context, stable dates, good venues and accessible coverage, and audiences can form habits. Move matches unpredictably and market them as obligation, and indifference becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A proper home season should have an identity. Announce it early. Rotate venues sensibly. Avoid cavernous grounds when smaller cricket cities could create atmosphere. Sell affordable multi-day passes and allow school groups to attend. Publish transport and entry information that treats spectators as guests rather than security problems. None of this requires a sentimental war against T20. It requires administrative care.
The counterargument is blunt: limited-overs cricket pays for the ecosystem. I accept that. Commercial success is not the villain. The question is what the surplus protects. If T20 revenue merely expands T20 while Tests are praised in retirement speeches, the ecosystem becomes a monoculture. Money should purchase diversity: strong domestic cricket, women’s pathways, associate development and international contests worth remembering.
India’s players still speak movingly about the Test cap, and I believe them. But individual affection cannot substitute for institutional design. Careers respond to schedules, contracts and selection incentives. Young players notice which performances become national events and which disappear behind a scorecard link. They are rational. If we want them to choose the hardest craft, the system must make that choice viable.
So yes, I celebrated India’s wickets and admired the technique on view. I also heard the silence between matches. A series victory can coexist with a strategic defeat. The BCCI has the money, audience and authority to make Test cricket central rather than ceremonial. What it lacks is not capacity but urgency. Those of us who grew up on the format should stop accepting affectionate language as policy. The game does not need another tribute. It needs protected time.
