From auto-rickshaws to trophy parades: The improbable but unstoppable rise of India's Women in Blue

There is a certain irony in the fact that Indian women's cricket owes its official birth not to a boardroom decision or a benevolent grant, but to a man riding around Lucknow in an auto-rickshaw with a hand-held microphone, hollering an invitation that must have sounded, in 1973, like a fairly outlandish joke: "Kanyaon ki cricket hogi, zaroor aaiye" — girls will play cricket, do come. That man was Mahendra Kumar Sharma, who had been organizing softball and handball tournaments for schoolgirls in Lucknow, and who noticed at a softball meet in Hyderabad that the girls, having watched some boys play, had started swinging the softball bats at an imaginary cricket ball instead. thebetterindia

That small, almost accidental spark is where this story really begins — not with Harmanpreet Kaur lifting a trophy in Navi Mumbai fifty-two years later, though we will get there, but with a man nobody remembers organizing a tournament that almost nobody attended. Sharma's Women's Cricket Association of India was formally registered under the Societies Act in Lucknow in 1973, with around 200 curious onlookers showing up for the first tournament at Queen's Anglo Sanskrit College. Two hundred people. For context, more than that will show up for a decent under-14 school match today. But that gathering — half novelty show, half genuine sporting ambition — was the seed of everything that has followed: the Test caps, the World Cup final heartbreaks, the eventual, thunderous triumph, and the crores now changing hands at a glittering annual auction in a Mumbai convention centre. Wikipedia

This is an attempt to tell that fuller story — not just the highlight reel everyone already knows, but the parts that tend to get left out of the montage: the women who played for nothing, the administrators who mattered more than history gave them credit for, and the quietly extraordinary depth Indian cricket has built that now allows it to genuinely stand toe to toe with cricket's oldest women's powers.

The Prehistory: Before the softball bats

Sharma's WCAI is usually cited as the true starting gun, but women's cricket in India didn't spring from nothing in 1973. There was already a women's cricket club in Bombay — the Albees Cricket Club, started in 1969 by Aloo Bamjee and her husband — a lonely outpost of the sport in a country where a girl holding a cricket bat was, at best, an eccentricity and, at worst, a scandal. This detail rarely makes it into the popular telling, perhaps because Bombay's Albees never grew into a movement the way Lucknow's initiative eventually did. But it matters, because it tells you something the folklore glosses over: the appetite for the game among Indian women predates any organization by years, possibly decades. The administrators didn't create the desire to play. They just finally noticed it. greenportfolio

Once the WCAI existed, the growth was almost startling in its speed — the first Women's Inter-State Nationals in Pune in April 1973 had just three teams (Bombay, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh); by the end of that same year, the Varanasi edition had eight; soon after, fourteen. Two women, Chandra Tripathi and Pramilabai Chavan, took over as chairperson and president in this period and, alongside Sharma, effectively willed a domestic structure into existence out of pure administrative stubbornness. Railways and Air India began fielding their own women's teams, offering players something almost nobody else could: a salary, and by extension, permission from their families to keep playing. shethepeopleshethepeople

That last point deserves lingering on, because it is the quietest and most consequential thread running through the entire early history of the sport. A government job with Indian Railways or Air India wasn't just an income. For a young woman in the 1970s and '80s wanting to play a sport her own society considered faintly improper, a stable job was often the only argument that could out-shout a disapproving father or a skeptical mother-in-law. Cricket didn't just need bats and grounds. It needed employers willing to gamble a payroll slot on a girl who could bowl leg-spin.

India's first official Test cricket came in 1975, when an Australian under-25 team toured for a three-match series — one at Pune, one at Delhi, one at Calcutta — with the captaincy split, unusually, across three different women for the three matches: Ujwala Nikam, Sudha Shah, and Shreeroopa Bose. India's own first international fixture is generally recorded as 31 October 1976, a Test against the West Indies at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore, which ended in a draw. There was no television coverage worth the name. There was barely a paragraph in the papers the next morning. But it happened, and it happened only because a handful of people had spent three years building the scaffolding for it to be possible at all. espncricinfoWikipedia

The torchbearers: Playing for love, Paying from pocket

Every retelling of Indian women's cricket eventually arrives at the same names — Shantha Rangaswamy, Diana Edulji, Sudha Shah, and a little later, Anjum Chopra — and rightly so. But it's worth resisting the urge to simply list their achievements and move on, because the more interesting truth is what those achievements cost them, in an era when the word "professional" didn't remotely apply to a woman cricketer.

Shantha Rangaswamy captained the Indian team in that historic 1976 debut, taking guard as the first captain in the country's Test history at a time when women's cricket had precisely zero commercial value and roughly the same amount of institutional respect. Diana Edulji — a left-arm spinner whose numbers would embarrass plenty of contemporary bowlers — toured, trained, and represented her country for years in conditions that would be unthinkable for any cricketer, male or female, today: no sponsorship, patchy kit, minimal medical support, and tours that were often self-funded or funded on threadbare board budgets that had clearly been drawn up as an afterthought. These weren't women chasing fame or fortune, because there was almost none of either on offer. They played because they loved the game more than the game, at that point, deserved to be loved.

Anjum Chopra, who would go on to become one of the most recognizable faces of the sport in the 1990s and 2000s, effectively grew up inside this same austere ecosystem — one where a national call-up meant pride, certainly, but rarely any material change in your life. Mithali Raj, who debuted as a teenager in the late 1990s, spent the best part of two decades as the face of the sport, quietly compiling the kind of numbers — the most international runs by any woman in the game's history, at the time of her retirement — that should have made her a household name on the scale of any male cricketer, and yet spent large stretches of her career playing in front of sparse stands and even sparser headlines. Jhulan Goswami, meanwhile, was out on grounds in Chakdaha, West Bengal, dreaming of playing for India while balancing school and train journeys to Kolkata for coaching, before going on to become the leading wicket-taker in the history of women's ODI cricket — a genuine fast-bowling great who, for a large chunk of her career, trained and toured with barely a fraction of the recognition a moderately useful male domestic cricketer might expect.

None of these women had a WPL contract to look forward to. None of them had brand endorsements queued up. What they had was a stubborn, almost irrational belief that the sport was worth their best years regardless of what it gave back. That belief is the actual foundation stone of everything Indian cricket fans now get to enjoy — not a strategy document, not a five-year plan, just a chain of individually courageous decisions by women who kept showing up.

The stories nobody tells at dinner parties

If you ask a casual cricket fan to name a landmark moment in Indian women's cricket, you'll likely get one of two answers: the 2017 World Cup final loss to England at Lord's, or the 2025 World Cup win at home. Both are fair answers. But there is a whole substrate of smaller, stranger, more human stories sitting underneath the headline history that almost never get told, and they're arguably more revealing of what this sport actually took to build.

There's Mahendra Kumar Sharma himself, a man who, by most accounts, never sought credit for what he built and has largely gone unrecognized for pioneering the very structure that produced Diana Edulji, Shantha Rangaswamy, and everyone who followed. He isn't on any stamp. There's no stadium named after him. He is, at best, a footnote in most retellings of a sport he effectively invented in this country as an organized pursuit. thebetterindia

There's the fact that the WCAI received official government recognition only in 1978 — five full years after it had already registered itself, run multiple national tournaments, and joined the International Women's Cricket Council. The state took half a decade to catch up to what a handful of committed volunteers had already built. shethepeople

There's the deeply underappreciated 2005 story: India's first-ever World Cup final appearance, where they ran into an Australian juggernaut and lost by 98 runs. It's remembered, when it's remembered at all, as a defeat. What gets lost is that reaching that final at all — with a fraction of the board's attention, budget, or media appetite pointed their way — was itself a small miracle of talent surviving despite the system rather than because of it.

There's the 2017 final against England, which does get talked about, but usually just as "the one where they lost by nine runs." What deserves more airtime is what that near-miss actually did: it was arguably the single biggest catalyst for public and commercial interest in Indian women's cricket, a defeat so gripping and so widely watched that it did more for the sport's visibility than a decade of quiet Test-match grinding ever had. Sometimes the most transformative result in a sport's history is a loss.

And there's a story from 2022, easily lost in the ocean of India's cricketing content: at the Commonwealth Games, India reached the final and, in the semi-final against England, Sneh Rana defended fourteen off the last over, dismissing Katherine Brunt to seal victory by four runs and send India into their first-ever Commonwealth Games cricket final. It's a two-line entry in most record books. It deserves to be a chapter.

These aren't the stories that trend. They're the connective tissue.

The WPL: When money also respects the game

Every sport eventually needs an economic engine, and for a long time Indian women's cricket simply didn't have one. That changed, decisively, in February 2023, when the BCCI staged the inaugural Women's Premier League auction at the Jio World Convention Centre in Mumbai. Of the 1,525 players who had registered for the auction, the list was pruned to 409, split between 246 Indians and 163 overseas players, competing for a maximum of 90 slots across five franchises. businesstoday

The numbers alone tell a story that would have been unimaginable to Diana Edulji's generation. The five franchise owners — among them Adani Sportsline, Reliance's Indiawin Sports, and the operators behind Royal Challengers Bangalore — collectively bid INR 4,669.99 crore for ownership rights, a figure BCCI secretary Jay Shah called proof that stakeholders "thoroughly believe in the concept." Smriti Mandhana became the first player ever auctioned in WPL history, sold to Royal Challengers Bangalore for INR 3.4 crore — a sum that, adjusted for what women cricketers had historically earned in this country, might as well have been a rounding error turned into a small fortune. bcci wisden

The real magic of the WPL, though, isn't the marquee prices. It's what happens two or three rungs below the marquee names — the domestic players from Baroda or Vidarbha or the Railways sides who spend a fortnight sharing a dressing room with Ellyse Perry or Alyssa Healy or Sophie Ecclestone and absorb, almost by osmosis, habits and standards that used to take a decade of international exposure to pick up. Uncapped young Indian cricketers who might otherwise have spent their entire careers in the relative obscurity of domestic cricket are now getting bid on, coached by World Cup winners, and given a stage in front of full stadiums and national broadcast audiences before they've even played for their country. That is the multiplier effect nobody quite predicted when the tournament was announced: the WPL isn't just paying stars, it's manufacturing the next generation faster and better than any academy could on its own.

The on-field payoff: No longer the plucky underdog

For decades, the honest, uncomfortable truth about Indian women's cricket was that it was talented but fragile — capable of a spectacular one-off performance, but rarely of sustained dominance against the game's genuine aristocracy: Australia, England, New Zealand, South Africa. That framing has quietly, decisively stopped being true.

In 2022, India won their first bilateral series on English soil in 23 years — a statement result that suggested the gap to the game's traditional powerhouse was closing. Three years later, in the summer of 2025, that gap looked to have closed further still. India won their first-ever T20I series against England, taking an unassailable 3-1 lead, with the series-clinching fourth match in Worcester built on India's spinners — Radha Yadav, Deepti Sharma, and newcomer Shree Charani — restricting England to a modest total that Shafali Verma and Smriti Mandhana chased down comfortably. India also won the accompanying ODI series 2-1, with Harmanpreet Kaur named player of the series. India women's national cricket team

Then came the World Cup, hosted on home soil, and it turned into the defining sporting story of the year. India reached the final for a third time, having previously fallen agonizingly short in both 2005 and 2017. The road there wasn't tidy — three successive defeats in the group phase had reopened every familiar doubt about India's ability to handle pressure on the biggest stage — but the semi-final against seven-time champions Australia produced arguably the signature statement of the entire tournament. Chasing 339, a genuinely enormous target, India got there — one of the highest successful run-chases in the history of Women's ODIs. Harmanpreet Kaur battled cramps to score a defiant 89, but the innings that will be replayed for years belonged to Jemimah Rodrigues — dropped from the side earlier in the tournament, recalled, and responding with an unbeaten 127 that has been called one of the greatest knocks in the competition's history. 

The final itself, against South Africa at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai, was almost anticlimactic by comparison, in the way that a well-earned coronation often is. Shafali Verma — recalled to the squad only as injury cover — top-scored with a career-best 87 as India posted 298 for 7, then chipped in with the ball too, before Deepti Sharma sealed it with 5 for 39, taking the final wicket to confirm a 52-run win and India's maiden Women's World Cup title. Verma had been drafted into the squad barely a week earlier as cover for the injured Pratika Rawal, and walked away as player of the match in a World Cup final. Deepti Sharma finished the tournament as player of the tournament, having contributed 22 wickets and 215 runs across nine matches. Somewhere in South Africa's chase, Laura Wolvaardt made a genuinely magnificent century of her own — becoming the first captain ever to score a hundred in a Women's World Cup final — and still finished on the losing side, which tells you plenty about how far India had to climb, and how completely they'd climbed it. India Win ICC Women's World Cup 2025

It is worth stating plainly what that result means in the context of the SENA countries — South Africa, England, New Zealand, Australia — that have historically formed cricket's power bloc, men's and women's game alike. India didn't sneak past a weakened Australian side or exploit a fluke pitch. They chased down 339 against the most decorated team in the format's history, in a knockout match, at a World Cup, and then beat South Africa in the final. That is not the profile of a plucky team that occasionally punches above its weight. That is the profile of a genuine top-two or top-three side in world cricket, and results across 2025 back that up rather than isolating it as a one-off.

The Pipeline: Why this isn't a peak but a base camp

The most reassuring part of India's current position isn't the senior team's results — it's what's coming up behind them. India's under-19 women's team has won back-to-back Under-19 World Cups, in 2023 and 2025, alongside an Under-19 Asia Cup title in 2024. That is not a fluke generation. That is a system now reliably manufacturing champions at the age-group level, which is precisely the leading indicator any serious cricketing nation should want. Wikipedia

Consider the names now filtering through: Shafali Verma, a genuine six-hitting phenomenon who was a teenage sensation before she was old enough to vote, walking into a World Cup final as injury cover and playing the innings of her career. Jemimah Rodrigues, dropped mid-tournament and returning to play one of the great World Cup knockout innings ever recorded. Richa Ghosh, a fearsome hitter behind the stumps still barely into her twenties. Deepti Sharma, an all-rounder whose value to the side — bat, ball, and clearly, temperament — is now arguably comparable to any all-rounder in the men's game. Pratika Rawal, described by multiple observers as one of the breakout stars of the World Cup before injury intervened. Shreyanka Patil, Titas Sadhu, Kranti Goud — names that would have meant nothing outside hardcore domestic-cricket circles five years ago, now genuine international performers with WPL contracts and national caps to their name.

The infrastructure behind them has changed just as sharply as the visibility. The WPL means domestic-level Indian cricketers are now training and competing alongside the very best in the world every year, not once every few years on a rare overseas tour. Central contracts and improved match fees mean fewer players have to choose between cricket and a stable career — the same dilemma that quietly ended so many promising careers in the Rangaswamy and Edulji era. State associations have visibly increased investment in girls' age-group cricket, partly because the WPL auction has turned unearthed domestic talent into a genuinely marketable commodity, which is its own quietly brilliant incentive structure: scouting is no longer charity, it's good business.

None of this guarantees perpetual dominance — sport doesn't work that way, and Australia in particular remain a fearsomely deep, ruthlessly professional outfit that won't simply hand over their supremacy. But the honest assessment, based on what's visible right now — a World Cup title, back-to-back age-group world titles, a thriving domestic league, a deepening pool of genuine match-winners, and results against every SENA nation in the last two years — is that India isn't at a peak. It's closer to base camp for what could be a genuinely extended period near the summit of the women's game.

A closing word — Including one for those in suits (for a change)

It would be easy to end this piece purely on the players, and they deserve every word of praise that's been written here and plenty more. But there's a group that rarely gets acknowledged warmly in Indian cricket writing, and this feels like the rare, fair occasion to do it: the administrators.

Indian cricket administration has, over the decades, earned no shortage of its criticism — for opacity, for politics, for priorities that too often seemed to favor spectacle over substance. But on women's cricket specifically, something has genuinely gone right in the last several years. The decision to launch the WPL with serious financial backing rather than a token, underfunded gesture; the willingness to give the team consistent central contracts and match fees closer to parity with the men's setup; the choice to host and heavily promote the 2025 World Cup on home soil rather than treat it as a scheduling obligation — these were real decisions, made by real people in real boardrooms, and they mattered. It is entirely possible to hold administrators accountable for their many historical failures while still crediting them for getting this particular, important thing largely right. Credit, in this case, is due — and it's rare enough that it's worth actually saying.

From a rickshaw and a microphone in 1973, to two hundred curious spectators in Lucknow, to Diana Edulji touring on threadbare budgets, to Mithali Raj quietly amassing a mountain of runs in front of empty stands, to Jhulan Goswami redefining what fast bowling could look like in the women's game, to a nine-run heartbreak at Lord's that somehow did more good than a dozen quiet wins — every part of that chain led here: to a home World Cup, a stadium full of thirty thousand people, and an Indian team that beat Australia and South Africa in the space of a week to become, undeniably, world champions.

The trophy is real. But it isn't really the point. The point is that Indian women's cricket no longer needs anyone's permission to be taken seriously — not from a skeptical relative, not from an underfunded board, not from the game's old aristocracy. It has simply, patiently, brilliantly earned its seat at the top table, and on current evidence, it isn't planning on giving it up anytime soon. 

After all, Mhaari chhoriyan chhoron se kam hain key?!

Jai Ho!

Sachin vs Virat: The "GOAT" Debate

In the last few days, a cricket argument that most Indian fans thought had been settled in their hearts, if not on paper, was reopened by one of the most respected voices in the modern game. AB de Villiers, a man who shared a dressing room with Virat Kohli at Royal Challengers Bengaluru for over a decade and who built his own reputation as one of the finest batters of his generation, said on his YouTube channel that Kohli had taken Indian batting overseas to "a level even Sachin Tendulkar had not reached." His reasoning was specific: Tendulkar was the first subcontinental batter to prove that Indian players could succeed on bouncy, seaming pitches outside Asia, but Kohli, in de Villiers' eyes, pushed that standard further and raised the bar for everyone who came after.

The comments landed exactly as you'd expect a match dropped in a room full of dry leaves to land. Former India pacer Dodda Ganesh fired back within hours, sarcastically telling de Villiers to "pass on the weed," a blunt dismissal of the claim. Fans picked sides across social media. Statisticians pulled up spreadsheets. And the oldest fault line in Indian cricket fandom — Sachin or Virat — cracked open again, right as India was busy handing Sri Lanka a 165-run hiding in the first Test at Galle.

Here is the thing about that fault line: it has always run deeper than "who scored more" or "who averaged higher in this particular sub-category of conditions." It is a debate about what greatness actually means in a team sport where one man's runs are only ever half the story. And when you look at the whole story — not just Kohli's overseas average, not just Tendulkar's overseas average, but the era each man batted in, the bowling attacks they faced, the burden they carried, and the shadow each man's career cast over the game that came after — the conclusion is not close. Sachin Tendulkar remains, and will likely remain for a very long time, the greatest cricketer India has ever produced. Virat Kohli is a magnificent, era-defining batter and the rightful heir to a piece of Tendulkar's throne. But heir is not the same as equal, and equal is not the same as superior.

Let's build the case properly, because this argument deserves more than nostalgia and more than a highlight reel.

Start With the Only Person Whose Opinion Should End the Debate: Virat Kohli Himself

Before we get anywhere near statistics, there's a simple truth that a lot of people conveniently skip past when they want to crown Kohli as the greater of the two: Virat Kohli has spent his entire adult life calling Sachin Tendulkar his idol.

This isn't a one-off quote dug up for convenience. It is a running thread through Kohli's career. He has spoken, repeatedly and emotionally, about watching Tendulkar bat as a child in Delhi and deciding then and there what he wanted his life to look like. He dedicated India's 2011 World Cup win to Tendulkar, famously saying the team carried him on their shoulders because Tendulkar had carried Indian cricket on his for twenty-one years. When Kohli surpassed Tendulkar's ODI century tally in 2023, reaching his fiftieth hundred in a World Cup semi-final at the Wankhede — the same ground, fittingly, where Tendulkar lifted the World Cup in 2011 — Kohli's reaction wasn't triumph. It was reverence. He pointed to the sky, he looked toward the stands, and he made sure the moment was framed as a tribute rather than a coronation.

There is something worth sitting with here. Kohli is not a falsely modest man. He is competitive to the point of ferocity, unapologetic about his ambition, and has never pretended to be anything other than a player who wants to be the best in the world. This is a man who talks trash on the field, who has had documented rivalries with opposition players, who built his entire captaincy identity around aggression and self-belief. And yet, when the conversation turns to Tendulkar, all of that competitive instinct softens into something closer to devotion. That is not a coincidence, and it is not humility theater. It is Kohli, more clear-eyed about the history of the game than most pundits arguing on his behalf, acknowledging what he saw with his own eyes growing up and what he has come to understand even more since retiring from Test cricket: that Tendulkar operated in a context that no batter since has had to fully replicate.

If the man himself, the one supposedly being crowned above his idol by outside observers, refuses to accept that framing, shouldn't that tell us something? De Villiers is entitled to his opinion, and it's an informed one from a great player. But Kohli's own voice on this subject carries more weight than anyone else's, and Kohli has never once suggested he sees himself as bigger than Sachin Tendulkar.

The Numbers, Properly Read

Let's deal with the stats, because they matter, even if they are not the whole argument.

Sachin Tendulkar retired with 15,921 Test runs from 200 matches at an average of 53.78, with 51 centuries — both figures that stood, at the time of his retirement, as the outright records in the format. He also holds the record for the most ODI runs ever scored, over 18,000 of them, and was for years the record-holder for most ODI centuries too, with 49, before Kohli eventually surpassed it. Across all international cricket, Tendulkar reached 100 centuries, a mark so far ahead of anyone else in the sport's history that when people talk about it, they usually just call it "the hundred hundreds," as if no further explanation is needed. It isn't.

Kohli, for his part, retired from Test cricket in 2025 with 9,230 runs from 123 matches at an average of 46.85 and 30 centuries, including seven double-hundreds — the most by any Indian batter in the format. In ODIs, he has gone past 14,800 runs and, as of early 2026, holds the record for the most centuries in the format at 54, having overtaken Tendulkar's mark back in 2023. Across formats, Kohli's international century count sits at 85, which puts him second only to Tendulkar on the all-time list — fifteen centuries behind, with only the ODI column still open to him since his Test and T20I tallies are now final.

Read quickly, that comparison might look competitive. Read carefully, it tells a different story, and the difference lies in three things: longevity, workload, and what each man's runs actually meant to his team's chances of winning.

Tendulkar played 200 Test matches. Kohli played 123. Tendulkar's international career spanned twenty-four years, debuting as a sixteen-year-old in 1989 and playing his final Test in 2013. Across that span, the sport itself changed shape multiple times over — helmets became mandatory rather than occasional, pitches were prepared differently across different decades, bowling attacks evolved from the express pace of the late eighties to the reverse-swing era to the two-new-ball ODI rules that flattened out swing bowling in the 2010s. Tendulkar didn't just survive one era of bowling. He survived four or five overlapping ones, adjusting his technique as his body aged, as his eyesight and reflexes inevitably slowed, and as opposition teams built entire bowling plans around dismissing him specifically, year after year, for over two decades.

Kohli's career, remarkable as it is, unfolded over a much shorter window and under substantially different conditions — better bats, shorter boundaries in white-ball cricket, fielding restrictions that favored batters, flatter pitches prepared by broadcasters who wanted more boundaries, and a support cast around him that, as we'll get to, was frequently strong enough to share the burden Tendulkar so often had to carry alone.

None of this is said to diminish what Kohli achieved. It is said to point out that "more centuries in a shorter career, in a batting-friendlier era, with more support" and "fewer centuries in a longer career, in a bowling-friendlier era, with far less support" are not directly comparable using century counts alone. You have to ask what each hundred actually cost the man who scored it, and what it meant for the team that received it.

The Bowlers They Actually Faced

This is where the AB de Villiers argument, and frankly most modern arguments in Kohli's favor, tend to fall apart the moment you look closely.

Sachin Tendulkar's twenty-four-year career put him directly in the crosshairs of what is, by any honest reckoning, one of the greatest concentrations of fast-bowling and spin talent the sport has ever assembled in a single era. Consider who he had to face, not once or twice, but across entire series, entire tours, entire decades:

Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, two of the greatest exponents of reverse swing the game has ever produced, operating at the peak of their powers throughout the 1990s specifically against India, with Pakistan-India tensions adding an extra psychological weight to every ball. Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, arguably the finest fast bowler and finest leg-spinner in the history of the sport, both peaking in the same Australian sides that toured India and hosted India across the late nineties and 2000s. Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, the last great pairing of the West Indies pace factory, still terrifying batters well into the 1990s. Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock, and later Dale Steyn and Makhaya Ntini from South Africa. Muttiah Muralitharan, the greatest wicket-taker in Test history, operating for two full decades as a nightmare for every batting lineup in world cricket, India's included. Courtney rounding out with Brett Lee and later a fully-formed Steyn-Morkel South African pace attack in the 2000s.

That is not a list of good bowlers. That is a list that includes, by nearly every credible ranking exercise ever conducted by cricket historians, the actual GOAT of fast bowling (McGrath or Akram, depending on who you ask), the actual GOAT of leg-spin (Warne, unchallenged), and the actual GOAT of off-spin and of wicket-taking outright (Muralitharan, by a distance in the record books). Tendulkar didn't face one all-time great bowling attack. He faced, across the arc of his career, the peak version of nearly every all-time great bowling attack fielded by every major Test nation, because his career was simply long enough to overlap with all of them.

Now look at Kohli's era. He is a phenomenal player of fast bowling and built a genuinely excellent Test record against most attacks he faced. But be honest about who those attacks were built around: Dale Steyn in the back half of his career and Kagiso Rabada from South Africa, James Anderson and Stuart Broad from England — both excellent, workmanlike, but not spoken of in the same breath as an Akram or a McGrath by most historians — Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, and Mitchell Starc from Australia, a very good trio without a single bowler most panels would rank inside the all-time top five at their own discipline, and Trent Boult and Tim Southee from New Zealand. Good bowlers. Very good, in some cases genuinely great, bowlers. But nowhere in that list is there a consensus GOAT of pace bowling, a consensus GOAT of spin, and a consensus GOAT of wicket-taking overall, all operating in their pomp during the years Kohli was scoring his runs.

This is the part of the debate that gets flattened whenever people just compare batting averages side by side. An average doesn't know who was bowling. Fifty-three point seven eight against Akram, Warne, McGrath, and Muralitharan across two decades is not the same achievement, in terms of what it tells you about a batter's class, as a very good average against a collection of very good but not legendary attacks. Tendulkar didn't just play in a golden era of batting. He played through what is inarguably the single greatest concentration of bowling talent world cricket has produced in the sport's history, across pace and spin combined, and he still came out the leading run-scorer the format has ever seen.

Carrying a Team Alone vs. Batting in a Fab Four

There's a phrase that gets used a lot in this debate, and it's worth unpacking properly rather than throwing around as a slogan: "Sachin carried India alone."

For long stretches of the 1990s and into the early 2000s, that wasn't hyperbole, it was the literal batting lineup on the scorecard. India's top order for years rested overwhelmingly on Tendulkar's shoulders, with the rest of the batting frequently inconsistent, inexperienced, or simply not built to win matches on its own against elite attacks. There's a well-worn cricket saying from that era — "if Sachin gets out, India loses" — that existed because it was statistically, verifiably true across an enormous number of matches. Opposition captains built entire bowling and field-setting strategies specifically to dismiss one man, because they knew that removing Tendulkar early was often functionally equivalent to winning the match. That is an extraordinary, singular kind of pressure. It means every innings he walked out to bat, he wasn't just batting for his average. He was batting as the difference between his team having a chance and his team having none.

Kohli, by contrast, built the bulk of his career's white-ball legacy inside what the cricket world affectionately nicknamed the "Fab Four" era — himself alongside Steve Smith, Joe Root, and Kane Williamson, four batters from four different nations dominating world cricket at largely the same time, each pushing the others. That's a wonderful thing for the sport, and it speaks to the strength of competition Kohli faced from his peers. But within his own dressing room specifically, Kohli also had the benefit of batting alongside Rohit Sharma, one of the greatest ODI and T20 openers the format has produced, alongside a genuinely deep and skilled Indian middle and lower order across most of his prime years, and later alongside players like Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer who could shoulder scoring responsibility when Kohli himself had an off day. When Kohli failed, India frequently still had multiple other routes to victory. When Tendulkar failed for much of his prime, India often simply didn't have one.

This is precisely the distinction that gets lost when people wave stat sheets at each other and never ask what the runs were actually doing for the team around them. Kohli has, rightly, been immense in run chases — his fourth-innings and chasing numbers in ODIs are legitimately some of the best any batter has ever produced, and there is no attempt here to take that away from him. He has won India matches from impossible positions, has shown ice-cold composure under the weight of expectation in World Cups and ICC finals, and has been, by any measure, a phenomenal big-match player. But he has almost always done it as the best of several very good options, not as the only option standing between his team and defeat. Tendulkar spent the better part of two decades as exactly that: the only option, night after night, series after series, without the depth of support that Kohli enjoyed for most of his career.

What It Took an Entire Generation of GOATs to Even Approach

Here is, perhaps, the single most underrated argument in Tendulkar's favor, and it's one that doesn't get made nearly often enough: look at who it has taken to even get close to his records, and how many of them it has taken.

Tendulkar retired as the all-time leading run-scorer in Test cricket. The man currently chasing that record down is Joe Root, an England captain and, by any measure, one of the finest batters of his own generation — a genuine great of the modern game, closing in on both the most Test runs and the most Test matches played. It is entirely possible Root gets there. But note what that means: it has taken one of the very best batters of an entirely different generation, from an entirely different cricketing culture, playing an entirely different number of matches under different conditions, working across the majority of his own career just to have a realistic shot at a record Tendulkar set essentially by himself, in his own era, largely without a rival threatening to catch him at the time.

Tendulkar also held the record for most ODI centuries for years. It took Virat Kohli — a genuine, all-time great in his own right, one of the best white-ball batters the sport has ever produced — an entire career of sustained excellence, in a batting-friendlier era, with better bats and shorter boundaries and flatter white-ball pitches, to finally push past that mark.

Stop and actually sit with that for a second. It has not taken one great player to challenge Tendulkar's standing in the record books. It has taken multiple, separate, era-defining greats — Root chasing one record, Kohli chasing another, each of them among the two or three best batters of their own respective generations — each working an entire career just to get within range of, or eventually surpass, individual pieces of what Tendulkar built. That is not a coincidence, and it is not just a function of him having played a long time. Plenty of players have played long careers without leaving marks this durable. It's a testimony to the sheer scale, consistency, and quality of what Tendulkar produced, sustained without serious interruption across more than two decades, that the sport has needed several of its most gifted modern successors, operating independently across different formats and different eras, just to individually approach different fragments of his overall body of work. No single successor has matched the whole picture. It has taken the sport's best collectively chasing pieces of it.

That is what real, generational, structurally unmatched greatness looks like. It isn't that no one has ever come close in any one category — it's that coming close in any single category has required the best that an entirely new generation of the sport had to offer.

Kohli's Own Greatness Deserves to Be Stated Plainly

None of this should be read as diminishing Kohli, because that isn't the intent, and it wouldn't be honest either. Virat Kohli is, by any reasonable measure, one of the five or six greatest batters India has ever produced, and arguably the finest chaser of totals white-ball cricket has ever seen. His fitness standards changed the culture of the Indian dressing room permanently, dragging a generation of cricketers toward professionalism in a way that outlasted his own playing career. His captaincy turned India into a fast-bowling nation with genuine overseas Test ambitions, something that simply hadn't existed at that level before him. His conduct under pressure in ICC knockout games, his hundred-plus centuries across formats, his seven Test double-centuries, his all-time record for ODI hundreds — these are not small things, and nobody serious about the sport pretends otherwise.

He has been the standard-bearer for a full decade and a half of Indian cricket, carrying the emotional weight of an entire nation's cricketing expectations through a social media era that Tendulkar never had to navigate, where every single innings is dissected, memed, and criticized in real time by millions of people within minutes. That is its own unique pressure, and Kohli has largely handled it with remarkable resilience.

But being a worthy successor to a throne is not the same as being greater than the man who built it. Kohli inherited a game, a fanbase, and a set of expectations that Tendulkar's career had already shaped and elevated to unprecedented heights. He took that inheritance and did something genuinely special with it. That is admirable. It is not, however, evidence that he surpassed the man whose legacy he was inheriting — and, again, it is worth returning to the fact that Kohli himself has never claimed otherwise.

Beyond the Numbers: Conduct, Class, and What Neither Stat Sheet Can Capture

There's one more dimension to this that rarely gets its due weight in these debates, because it can't be reduced to a spreadsheet, and that's conduct — both on the field and off it.

Tendulkar played for twenty-four years under an intensity of public scrutiny that is difficult to overstate, carrying not just batting responsibility but something closer to a national emotional burden, and in all that time built a reputation for dignity that remains, to this day, essentially uncontested. There is no notable controversy attached to his name across more than two decades in the public eye — not with umpires, not with opponents, not with teammates, not off the field. He handled genuine adulation bordering on deification with a level of humility that friends, rivals, and journalists across every cricketing nation have independently and consistently described the same way. When he retired in 2013, the tributes came not just from India but from every corner of the cricketing world, including from bowlers who had spent entire careers trying and failing to dismiss him, because the respect he commanded was earned as much through how he carried himself as through what he scored.

Kohli, to his credit, has grown remarkably in this regard over the course of his career too, mellowing from a fierier, occasionally combative young cricketer into a senior statesman of the game who is now widely respected across cricketing nations. That evolution is genuinely admirable and worth acknowledging. But it is an evolution — a journey from a more turbulent starting point toward the kind of consistent, unwavering conduct that Tendulkar simply exhibited from the very beginning of his career to its very end, without the same visible arc of change required to get there.

This isn't a small, sentimental footnote to bolt onto the end of a stats argument. Greatness in cricket, particularly in a country where cricketers occupy something closer to religious significance than sporting celebrity, has always been judged by more than numbers. It's judged by what a player represents, how they carry the weight of a billion people's expectations without letting it curdle into arrogance or controversy, and how they leave the game relative to how they found it. By that measure too, Tendulkar's record is essentially spotless across an almost impossibly long career, and that consistency of character across such a demanding, unrelenting spotlight is its own form of greatness.

So, Who Wins the Debate?

AB de Villiers is a legend of the game, and he's entitled to look at overseas Test conditions specifically and conclude that Kohli's average in that narrow slice of the format edges Tendulkar's. That's a defensible, specific, narrow claim, and reasonable people can debate the exact numbers behind it.

But that narrow claim is not the same as the sweeping one that gets attached to it in the retelling — that Kohli is simply the better cricketer, full stop. That claim doesn't survive contact with the whole picture. It doesn't survive the length and difficulty of the era Tendulkar batted through. It doesn't survive the sheer concentration of all-time great bowlers — the actual GOATs of pace and spin — that Tendulkar had to face, tour after tour, for twenty-four years, compared to the very good but rarely legendary attacks Kohli built his numbers against. It doesn't survive the difference between being the one man an entire batting lineup depended on and being the best of several very good options in a talented dressing room. It doesn't survive the fact that it has taken not one but multiple all-time greats of an entirely new generation — Root chasing his Test aggregate, Kohli chasing his ODI century count — each spending an entire career just to individually approach different fragments of what Tendulkar built alone. And it doesn't survive Kohli's own, repeated, unforced testimony about who he considers the standard he has always been chasing.

Virat Kohli is a phenomenal cricketer, one of the best India has ever seen, and a completely worthy heir to the ODI throne Tendulkar once occupied. He deserves every ounce of the praise and admiration he receives, and this debate losing him the title of "greatest" takes nothing away from what he's built.

But heir is the correct word. Not equal. Not successor-who-surpassed. Heir.

Sachin Tendulkar remains the standard the entire sport, across generations, is still measuring itself against. No one trumps him. Not yet, and — based on what it has taken the game's best modern talents just to chase pieces of his legacy — perhaps not for a very long time to come.

As they say, Virat and all are fine but Sachin is Sachin yaar!

Jai Ho!

My squad for World Cup 2027

Let's address the elephant in the stadium: the 2027 World Cup is still comfortably over a year away, which in cricket-selection terms is roughly the distance between "reasonable planning" and "certified lunatic with a spreadsheet." And yet, here we are. Because that's the thing about being a fan with a plan — you don't wait for the selectors to do their job. You beat them to it, sharpen your pencil, and build the squad you'd pick if BCCI accidentally left the group chat open and handed you the keys.

So here's the pool: 25 players, filtered down from a nation with more batting depth than sense of restraint.

Eleven of them (in green) form the First XI. Four more players (in yellow) complete a travelling squad of fifteen. Eleven others make up a Second Choice XI — not "reserves who carry the drinks," but a legitimate mirror-image team built to replicate the First XI's exact skill profile, position for position. And three final names sit in the wings as pure insurance policies — one batting cover, one pace cover, one spin cover — for the day the universe decides your top two choices in a role are both simultaneously unavailable.

Twenty-five names. Every one of them earning their place for a reason. Let's walk through it.

The First XI: Your Green-Lit Starting Eleven

This is the team that walks out on opening day, assuming health, form, and the cricketing gods all cooperate — a big "assuming," but that's what depth is insurance against.

The Top Order: Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill (captain) open, because if it isn't broken, don't just avoid fixing it — actively worship it. Virat Kohli follows at three, still doing what Virat Kohli does, which is turning "chasing 280" into a personal art installation. Shreyas Iyer, as vice-captain, anchors the middle order — a role he's made his own with the calm of a man who has decided panic is for other people.

Behind the Stumps: Ishan Kishan gets the gloves. The rationale isn't just the keeping — it's the left-hand variety he injects into a middle order that could otherwise get monotonously right-handed, plus the strike-rate he brings when the innings needs someone to stop being polite about the bowling.

The All-Round Engine Room: Axar Patel and Hardik Pandya occupy the "Complete AR" slots — players who can win you a match with bat or ball, not just contribute respectably with both. Ravindra Jadeja slots in as the Bowling AR: a spinner first, sure, but one whose batting has bailed India out of enough corners that "just a bowler" stopped being an accurate description years ago. Between these three, India covers its all-round spin department entirely through multi-skilled players rather than a specialist tweaker — which is also why you won't find a pure spinner in this XI. When Axar and Jadeja are both bowling their overs and contributing runs, you don't need a third spin option cluttering the XI.

The Pace Battery: Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, and Mohammed Siraj make up the seam attack — Bhuvi's control and seam movement up front, Bumrah doing whatever it is Bumrah does that defies conventional biomechanics, and Siraj as the relentless, high-energy third seamer who never lets an over feel like a breather for the batter.

That's your eleven: four specialist batters, one keeper-batter, three all-rounders covering both bat and spin duties, and three pacers. A balanced, battle-tested unit.

The Final Four: Completing the 15

A World Cup squad isn't just an XI — it's an XI plus the four names who turn a starting team into a travelling insurance policy. These aren't afterthoughts; each one is the direct, ready-made replacement for a specific First XI player.

• KL Rahul (captain, backup keeper) — the deputy gloveman, and importantly, a middle-order option in his own right if Ishan Kishan has an off tournament or an off ankle.
• Mohammed Shami — the fourth seamer, a proven big-tournament performer who can walk into any of the three pace slots without the attack skipping a beat.
• Kuldeep Yadav — and here's the interesting one. The First XI carries zero specialist spinners, relying entirely on Axar and Jadeja for tweaked overs. Kuldeep is the squad's insurance against a wicket that suddenly demands genuine mystery spin, or a tournament stretch where the ball just isn't turning enough for all-rounders alone.
• Shivam Dube — the power-hitting Batting AR, there to inject some left-handed muscle into the middle overs and give the think-tank a finishing option that doesn't rely purely on the top four getting it right.

Fifteen names. A squad that's balanced on paper and, more importantly, balanced in personality — swagger up top, control in the middle, chaos (the good kind) at the death.

The Second Choice XI: A Carbon Copy, Not a Consolation Prize

Here's where the planning gets genuinely clever. Rather than assembling "the next 11 best players" as a random grab-bag, this is a Second XI built to replicate the exact same skill architecture as the first — a shadow team that could theoretically take the field tomorrow and not look like a downgrade in balance, even if it's a downgrade in reputation (for now).

• Yashasvi Jaiswal & Vaibhav Sooryavanshi open — the swashbuckling twenty-something answer to Rohit and Gill, all raw intent and minimal fear.
• Sanju Samson (vice-captain, keeper option) bats at three, doubling as a keeping alternative in this XI's own right.
• Tilak Varma holds the middle order together — composed beyond his years, in the Shreyas Iyer mould.
• KL Rahul (captain) — yes, he appears here too, because a genuine like-for-like backup for a specialist keeper-batter is rare enough that the same man plausibly leads both squads' depth chart.
• Shivam Dube and Washington Sundar cover the all-round bases, Harshit Rana provides the Bowling AR spark in Pandya/Jadeja's mould.
• Kuldeep Yadav again does spin-cover duty, while Mohammed Shami and Prince Yadav round out an entirely credible pace attack.

Notice something: Rahul, Dube, Shami, and Kuldeep aren't just Second XI members — they're the very four who complete the 15-man squad. Which makes sense once you think about it: the closest replacement for a First XI player, by definition, is often good enough to travel with the senior squad rather than sit at home waiting for a phone call.

The Reserve Trio: Break Glass in Case of Emergency

Beyond the 22 players spread across both XIs sit three specialists — not part of either playing eleven, but insurance for a very specific kind of crisis:

• Rajat Patidar — the batting reserve, ready to step in if the middle order needs a fresh face with red-hot domestic form.
• Arshdeep Singh — the pace reserve, left-arm variety in the pocket if conditions or workload demand a fourth seam option beyond Shami.
• Varun Chakravarthy — the spin reserve, mystery variations held in cold storage for a pitch that turns square and a moment that needs something the primary spin-bowling all-rounders can't quite conjure.

This is the "25" complete: 11 + 11 + 3.

The Skillset Ledger

Slice the 25 by role instead of by team, and the balance becomes even clearer:

Wicketkeepers: 3 - Ishan Kishan, KL Rahul, Sanju Samson

Specialist Batters: 8 - Gill, Rohit, Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Jaiswal, Vaibhav, Tilak Varma,   Patidar

Pacers: 6 - Bumrah, Siraj, Bhuvi, Shami, Arshdeep, Prince Yadav

Spinners: 2 - Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy

Complete All-Rounders: 2 - Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel

Batting All-Rounders: 2 - Shivam Dube, Washington Sundar

Bowling All-Rounders: 2 - Ravindra Jadeja, Harshit Rana

Add it up and you get 25 — a squad that's batting-heavy by design (eight specialist batters is no accident, given how many ODI run-chases turn into nerve-shredders), pace-rich (six seamers reflects modern ODI cricket's obsession with variety and reverse swing), and deliberately thin on specialist spin, because when your all-rounders can turn the ball themselves, you don't need to carry passengers.

The "Replacement for the Replacement" List

Even the best-laid squads need a Plan C, because injuries in cricket have the comedic timing of a poorly-written sitcom — they always strike the week before the big event. So, four names sit just outside the 25, ready to be summoned if the injury list gets genuinely alarming:

• Mayank Yadav — for when the pace reserves need a reserve, and raw, borderline-unfair speed is the requirement.
• Sai Sudharsan — left-handed batting cover, for balance in the middle order if the lefties above him are unavailable.
• Ruturaj Gaikwad — the elegant right-handed batting option, classical technique as a fallback for the top or middle order.
• Nitish Reddy — batting all-rounder depth, for when even the all-rounder cupboard looks bare.

None of these four are in the 25 — think of them as names pencilled into the margins, visible only if you squint at the depth chart hard enough. But that's the whole point of planning this early: by the time 2027 actually arrives, half these calls will look prophetic, and the other half will be cheerfully, spectacularly wrong. Either way, it's more fun than waiting for the selectors to catch up.

Hopefully, by the time the action begins in South Africa, we will get to see most (if not all) of them in action. And most importantly, in getting the Cup home.
Jai Ho!

Not just IPL, why India A is equally important for the next in line

Thanks to a certain Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, people have been following India A tours more closely than before but the fact is that India A tours have always been the biggest stage for India's next best.

Indian cricket’s greatest strength today is not just the brilliance of its national team. It is the depth that sits just beneath it. That depth does not emerge by accident. It is shaped, sharpened, and stress-tested through India A tours. These tours represent the closest thing to international cricket without the glare, and they are where potential is converted into readiness.

Yet, despite their importance, India A assignments are often sporadic, sometimes under-prioritized, and occasionally treated as peripheral to marquee bilateral series or franchise commitments. If India is serious about sustaining its dominance across formats and conditions, its next best set of players must play more India A matches, against varied opposition, across testing scenarios, and in unfamiliar conditions.

This article explores why India A tours matter, what they currently accomplish, what gaps remain, and how a more deliberate, structured approach can transform India’s already formidable bench into a generational advantage.

The invisible backbone of international success

When fans celebrate a breakout international performance, they often see the final product. What they do not see is the apprenticeship that precedes it. For most Indian cricketers over the past decade, that apprenticeship has involved India A cricket.

Think of players like KL Rahul, Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Rishabh Pant, Mohammed Siraj, or Shubman Gill. Many of them spent time touring England, Australia, South Africa, or New Zealand with India A before stepping into the national side. These tours helped them:

• Face swinging and seaming conditions in England
• Adjust to pace and bounce in Australia
• Develop patience on slow, low tracks at home
• Understand the grind of multi-day cricket under pressure

India A teams often play four-day matches, List A games, and sometimes T20s against host nation A sides or strong domestic teams. This variety builds adaptability. It also mirrors the unpredictability of international cricket, where players must constantly recalibrate.

Without these tours, the jump from domestic cricket to international cricket becomes steeper and riskier.

Domestic cricket alone is not enough

India’s domestic structure, including the Ranji Trophy, Duleep Trophy, and Vijay Hazare Trophy, is among the strongest in the world. But domestic cricket has inherent limitations.

Limited exposure to foreign conditions

Most Ranji matches are played on Indian pitches. These are typically slow, spin-friendly tracks with lower bounce. A player dominating here may struggle abroad due to:

• Lack of experience against the Dukes ball
• Unfamiliarity with lateral movement in England
• Difficulty handling high bounce in Australia or South Africa

India A tours bridge this gap by placing players in exactly those environments.

Predictable opposition styles

Domestic opponents often share similar playing styles. While competition is intense, it lacks the diversity of international teams. India A tours expose players to:

• Different bowling philosophies and field settings
• Aggressive, attacking styles versus attritional approaches
• Tactical nuances that vary from country to country

Reduced pressure simulation

Domestic cricket carries pressure, but not the same scrutiny as international cricket. India A tours sit in between. They simulate:

• Selection pressure
• Media attention, albeit limited
• Expectations of performance under unfamiliar conditions

This makes them ideal platforms to build mental resilience.

The importance of “almost international” cricket

India A matches are often described as a level just below international cricket. This “almost international” space is crucial.

Safe space for failure

At the highest level, failure can be costly. Players may get only a few opportunities before being dropped. India A tours offer a buffer:

• Players can fail, reflect, and improve
• Coaches can experiment with roles and positions
• Teams can test combinations without consequences for rankings

This encourages long-term thinking rather than short-term survival.

Immediate feedback loop

On an India A tour, a batter struggling against swing can work on technique within the same series. A bowler finding it hard to extract bounce can adjust lengths quickly. This real-time feedback loop accelerates development.

Role clarity before national selection

Selectors and team management benefit immensely from India A tours. They can identify:

• Who is ready to open overseas
• Which fast bowlers can sustain long spells abroad
• Who can anchor an innings in difficult conditions
• Which players can adapt formats

By the time a player debuts for India, there should be fewer unknowns.

Testing scenarios that shape complete cricketers

One of the biggest advantages of India A tours is the diversity of match situations players encounter.

Batting under different pressures

Players may be asked to:

• Bat long hours after an early collapse
• Accelerate in tricky run chases
• Handle hostile pace attacks on green pitches
• Counter spin on deteriorating tracks

Each scenario tests different skills and mindsets.

Bowling in varied roles

Bowlers get opportunities to:

• Lead the attack as strike bowlers
• Bowl defensively to contain runs
• Work in partnerships and set up dismissals
• Adapt to flat pitches versus bowler-friendly surfaces

Fielding intensity and adaptability

Fielding standards often dip when players are under fatigue or unfamiliar conditions. India A tours emphasize:

• Maintaining intensity over long matches
• Adapting to different ground sizes and outfield speeds
• Building communication within new team combinations

These experiences ensure players are well-rounded, not one-dimensional specialists.

Exposure to diverse conditions

India’s future success, especially in Test cricket, depends heavily on performances overseas. India A tours must replicate the toughest conditions.

England

• Dukes ball enhances swing for longer periods
• Cloud cover and damp conditions challenge technique
• Batters must play late and close to the body

India A tours here prepare players for exactly these nuances.

Australia

• Hard, bouncy pitches test back-foot play
• Pacers must hit the deck harder and maintain discipline
• Slip catching becomes critical due to edge-carry

South Africa

• Lateral movement and steep bounce
• Fast outfields demand quick reflexes
• Batters must balance aggression with caution

New Zealand

• Seam movement throughout the day
• Challenging for both batters and bowlers
• Requires patience and adaptability

Subcontinental variation

Even within Asia, conditions vary significantly. Tours to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, or the UAE expose players to:

• Different types of spin
• Heat and humidity challenges
• Slower pitches requiring different scoring methods

Regular exposure ensures players are not surprised when they step up.

Building a strong bench: insurance against uncertainty

Modern cricket schedules are relentless. Injuries, workload management, and format specialization mean the national team often requires replacements.

Seamless transitions

A strong India A system ensures that when a player is injured or rested:

• A ready replacement is available
• The team’s balance is maintained
• Performance consistency does not dip significantly

Competition for places

Healthy competition is essential. When fringe players are constantly tested through India A tours:

• Incumbents cannot become complacent
• Standards remain high
• Selection becomes merit-driven

Format-specific pipelines

India increasingly needs specialists across formats. India A tours can be tailored to build:

• Red-ball specialists
• White-ball finishers
• All-format performers

This clarity strengthens team planning.

Lessons from recent success cycles

India’s rise as a dominant Test side, especially overseas, has been built on depth.

Australia 2020-21

India’s historic series win in Australia saw multiple players stepping up despite injuries to key stars. Many of those replacements had prior India A experience in similar conditions.

Fast bowling revolution

India’s pace arsenal has grown significantly over the past decade. Much of this is due to:

• Exposure to overseas conditions through India A tours
• Workload conditioning in longer formats
• Ability to adapt lengths and strategies

Middle-order resilience

Players comfortable batting long hours abroad often have India A exposure. These tours simulate exactly the kind of challenges Test cricket presents.

Current gaps and missed opportunities

Despite the benefits, India A tours are not as frequent or structured as they could be.

Irregular scheduling

Tours are sometimes arranged around major series rather than as part of a fixed calendar. This leads to:

• Inconsistent preparation cycles
• Players missing out due to overlapping commitments
• Lack of continuity in development

Conflict with franchise cricket

The rise of T20 leagues, especially the IPL, creates scheduling challenges. Many players prioritize franchise commitments due to financial and career incentives.

Limited long-format focus

While white-ball cricket is well-covered, there is a need for more four-day matches in challenging conditions. Red-ball skills require sustained exposure.

Selection inconsistency

India A squads can sometimes be a mix of:

• Genuine prospects
• Players already established
• Short-term inclusions without long-term planning

A clearer philosophy would improve outcomes.

Time for a strategic roadmap

To fully unlock the potential of India A tours, a more deliberate approach is needed.

1. A fixed annual calendar

India A tours should be scheduled like international series, with a long-term roadmap:

• At least 2 to 3 overseas tours per year
• A mix of red-ball and white-ball formats
• Alignment with senior team tours for succession planning

2. Condition-specific tours

Each tour should have a clear objective:

• Seam-friendly conditions for fast bowling development
• Spin-heavy environments for subcontinental skills
• High-scoring venues to build chasing abilities

3. Strong opposition

Playing against top-quality opposition is crucial:

• Host nation A teams
• Strong domestic sides
• Emerging international teams

The goal should be to test players, not just give them game time.

4. Continuity in squads

Instead of constant reshuffling, create core groups:

• A red-ball core
• A white-ball core
• Overlapping players where necessary

This builds team cohesion and role clarity.

5. Integration with national team management

India A tours should not operate in isolation. Coordination with the national team is essential:

• Feedback from senior coaches
• Tracking specific skill development
• Preparing players for defined roles

The role of coaches and support staff

Coaching on India A tours is as important as the matches themselves.

Skill development focus

Coaches can work closely with players on:

• Technical adjustments
• Tactical awareness
• Mental conditioning

Data-driven insights

Modern cricket relies heavily on analytics. India A tours can use:

• Video analysis for technique improvement
• Data tracking for performance trends
• Match simulations for scenario planning

Mentorship

Former international players as coaches provide:

• Real-world insights
• Guidance on handling pressure
• Understanding of international expectations

The psychological edge

Cricket at the highest level is as much mental as it is physical. India A tours play a critical role in shaping temperament.

Handling isolation and travel fatigue

Touring abroad involves:

• Long travel schedules
• Time zone changes
• Cultural adjustments

India A experience helps players adapt before they reach the national team.

Dealing with setbacks

Failures on tour can be tough. But learning to respond constructively is key:

• Regrouping after poor performances
• Staying confident in unfamiliar conditions
• Maintaining discipline over long tours

Building leadership skills

Many future captains emerge from India A setups. These tours provide:

• Opportunities to lead
• Experience in decision-making
• Understanding team dynamics

The economic and strategic perspective

Investing in India A tours is not just a sporting decision. It has broader implications.

Protecting the national team brand

Consistent performance ensures:

• Strong fan engagement
• Commercial success
• Global dominance

A robust bench safeguards this.

Long-term cost efficiency

Developing players early reduces:

• Risk of expensive failures at the top level
• Need for constant reshuffling
• Pressure on senior players

Strategic dominance

Teams with depth can dominate across formats and conditions. India A tours are the foundation of that dominance.

A comparative global view

Other top cricketing nations also rely heavily on second-tier tours.

Australia A

Australia has long used A tours to prepare players for overseas assignments. Their emphasis on conditions-specific training has contributed to their consistent competitiveness.

England Lions

The England Lions program focuses on:

• Early exposure to international conditions
• Strong integration with the national setup
• Clear pathways for players

South Africa A and New Zealand A

These teams also use A tours to:

• Build depth
• Prepare players for tough overseas tours
• Maintain competitiveness despite smaller player pools

India, with its vast talent base, has the opportunity to outpace all of them if it fully commits.

The future: Making India A tours non-negotiable

The next decade of Indian cricket will depend on how well it nurtures its second line. With increasing workloads, format specialization, and global competition, depth is no longer optional.

India A tours should become:

• Structured
• Frequent
• Purpose-driven
• Closely aligned with national goals

Players should view selection for India A not as a consolation, but as a critical step toward international success.

Looking ahead

India’s cricketing ecosystem is already one of the strongest in the world. But staying at the top requires constant evolution. India A tours are the bridge between promise and performance, between domestic dominance and international success.

They provide exposure to conditions that cannot be replicated at home, allow players to fail and learn without high stakes, and create a pipeline of ready talent capable of stepping into the national side at short notice.

If India wants to sustain its dominance across formats and conditions, it must invest more intentionally in its next best players. That means more India A tours, better planning, stronger opposition, and a clear development pathway.

Because the strength of a cricketing nation is not just measured by its playing XI. It is measured by the quality of players waiting just behind them, ready to step in, perform, and carry the legacy forward.
Jai Ho!