India's consistent decline in Test cricket has angered Ravi Shastri. The former head coach of India is furious after losing 1-3 in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy and suffering home whitewashes against South Africa and New Zealand. Why wouldn't it? Indian cricket reached previously unheard-of heights thanks to Shastri and then-captain Virat Kohli, making the Test team one of the greatest travelers in cricket history.
India only lost two Test matches under Kohli, in 2017 at Pune and in 2021 at Chennai, so winning at home was a given. The only question was the margin. Hence, it’s fair if Shastri feels saddened, witnessing the team that he and Rahul Dravid developed go from not losing a single series between 2012 and 2024 to now playing and suffering clean sweeps.
"You tell me. What happened in Guwahati – from 100/1, you skip to 130/7 – this team is not that bad either. They have this much talent at least. The players should take some responsibility too. You have played spin since you started playing cricket," Shastri said in a teaser podcast released by Prabhat Khabar.
Shastri refuted the interviewer's question about whether he was shielding head coach Gautam Gambhir. "I’m not protecting [him]. 100 per cent (he is responsible too). When am I saying anything otherwise? Agar yeh mere saath hota, main pehla responsibility leta (Had this happened with me, I would have been the first one to take responsibility. But then, I wouldn’t have spared the players either in the team meeting,” Shastri added.
Shastri’s semi-meltdown is justified. With a win rate of 65% across forms from 2017 to 2021, he is the most successful coach in India. Under Shastri's leadership, the Indian Test team became a merciless group of cricketers who will do anything to achieve success.
Under Shastri’s tenure, India clinched its first-ever Test series win in Australia and repeated the achievement three years later. The team held the No. 1 Test ranking for an impressive 42 months between 2016 and 2021, and also reached the final of the inaugural World Test Championship in 2021.
Dravid, who replaced Shastri, experienced a poor start, losing the Test series to South Africa. However, as he picked up pace, India went on to put on a show, beating Australia and England at home in 2023 and 2024. India even made the second WTC final. However, it appears that under Gambhir, that growth has come to a crashing halt.
The only two Test series that India have won in the last 14 months are against Bangladesh and the West Indies, followed by the defeat in Australia, a draw in England not too long ago and now a thrashing at the hands of South Africa.
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