West Indies' Test-match batting a symptom of far deeper issues

If West Indies harboured any hopes of causing a ripple on their two-Test tour of India, those hopes must have largely rested on their pace trio of Jayden Seales, Shamar Joseph and Alzarri Joseph, who had taken 48 wickets at a combined average of 18.52 in their last Test series before this one, at home against Australia.

With both Josephs lost to injury before the series even began, it was no surprise that West Indies looked at no stage of the first Test to be on a level footing with India. They simply didn't have the bowling to compete with a deep, incisive and varied India attack.

Even so, should West Indies really have been bowled out for 162 and 146 on that Ahmedabad pitch? It had an unusual amount of grass for an Indian pitch, but it was still one on which West Indies, winning the toss, chose to bat first, reckoning, probably correctly, that it was still enough of an Indian pitch to make batting fourth significantly harder than batting first.

The Test match, in the end, didn't need a fourth innings at all.

For fans of West Indies, there was a familiar ring to how the batting unravelled. Their totals of 162 and 146 were their 12th and 13th sub-200 totals in their last 15 Test innings. Neither of their innings in Ahmedabad lasted 50 overs - it was the ninth time this had happened in that 15-innings stretch, which also includes one innings that lasted exactly 50 overs. Not once in those 15 innings had West Indies batted out 90 overs, or a full day of Test cricket.

Even when you throw in the mitigating factor of tricky batting conditions - both at home against Australia and Bangladesh, and in the dustbowls of Multan, where they drew 1-1 with Pakistan - these are alarming numbers.

And they point to a deeper issue in West Indies cricket, a long-running struggle to produce batters ready for Test cricket. Collectively, West Indies batters average 21.83 since the start of 2020. No batting team in Test cricket has done worse.

And they have only scored 14 hundreds in 43 Tests, during which their batters have played a combined 867 innings. Their batters have scored centuries, in short, at a rate of approximately one every 62 innings. That rate is also, by far, the worst of any Test team in this decade.

How often batters score centuries is a good indicator of a team's batting health. If a batter scores hundreds frequently over a five-year period, it means they have the technique, the physical and mental endurance, the awareness of their own game, the strengths and weaknesses of the bowlers they are up against, and the adaptability to bat for long periods in different conditions while keeping the scorecard moving.

If you have two or three batters like that, your line-up can keep bowling attacks on the field for longer, and test their wicket-taking depth and stamina. Your own bowlers tend to get more rest between innings, as well as the chance to bowl on pitches that have undergone more wear and tear.

Some of the attributes that go into making batters frequent scorers of centuries are innate or developed at an early stage. Many others, however, come with experience: this is why so many batters take time to replicate their Under-19 run-scoring feats in first-class cricket, where they find themselves facing bowlers who won't give them a boundary ball every second over, who suss out their strengths and weaknesses quickly, and who make sure to bowl and set fields accordingly.

The batters' scoring rate might drop, and this might yield errors either from taking risks to manufacture runs or from lacking the physical and mental endurance to bat time and let runs come at their pace.

Over time, good young batters learn from these experiences, and learn to construct long innings.

Good, balanced pitches that reward skilful, hard-working batters and bowlers play an important role in this. They make sure batters have to develop a good defence to score runs, but they also allow batters to trust their defence. And they allow batters to repeat good processes and turn them into habits.

West Indies' alarming lack of Test centuries over recent years points to a lot of issues, and first-class pitches are one of them. Roston Chase, their captain, pointed this out in his post-match press conference in Ahmedabad.

"Yeah, that is [one] of the infrastructure problems that we do have," he said. "The pitches in the Caribbean are not really batsman-friendly. So guys don't really bat for long periods and score those big scores. And then, too, the outfields in the Caribbean are really slow. When you hit the ball in the gaps, you probably end up struggling to get two.

"Those are just some of the problems that we are faced with in the Caribbean. That's why you see guys averaging so low."

Only one member of West Indies' squad in India - Kevlon Anderson, who has only played one Test, and did not play in Ahmedabad - has a 40-plus first-class average. And the squad is a reflection of West Indies' domestic cricket: since its post-pandemic return in 2022, only five of the top ten run-getters in CWI's Regional Four-Day Tournament average over 40, and only one of them - Kraigg Brathwaite, recently dropped after playing 100 Tests - over 50.

Compare that to the Ranji Trophy, India's main domestic first-class tournament. Since that tournament's post-pandemic resumption, also in 2022, none of the top ten run-getters average below 40. Only four of them, in fact, average below 50.

This doesn't mean that the best Indian domestic bowlers are struggling to take wickets. The top ten wicket-takers in the Regional Four-Day Tournament in this period average between 18.80 and 25.01, and the top ten Ranji Trophy wicket-takers between 18.22 and 24.06. Barely any difference.

This suggests that while there might be a pitches-and-outfields issue in West Indian first-class cricket, there probably is a batting-quality issue too. And why wouldn't there be, when so much of the best batting talent in the Caribbean has been funnelled away from first-class cricket and into T20s? The names lost to red-ball cricket are far too many to list here, but here's an idea for an ESPNcricinfo fan poll: an alternative-reality West Indies top seven in Test cricket in 2025, in a universe where the T20 format never existed.

In the universe we inhabit, West Indies have no choice but to make do with what they have available to them, and in his limited time in charge of the Test team, their head coach Daren Sammy has made an effort to broaden this pool. He has brought into or back to Test cricket players who've enjoyed white-ball success for West Indies, such as Chase - he returned as captain after more than two years out of the Test side - Shai Hope, John Campbell, Brandon King and Keacy Carty.

In a press conference before this India tour, Sammy revealed he had even tried to sound out Sherfane Rutherford - the last of whose 17 first-class matches came all the way back in 2019 - to see if he might make himself available for this Test assignment.

These are signs, perhaps, that Sammy is trying to approach Test-match selection like England do, placing attributes above first-class records, and looking for batters with attacking styles of play. It's a sound idea in theory, given just how much attacking talent West Indies cricket is blessed with.

But try translating it into an actual Test-match line-up. Sammy must face an unimaginably difficult task to get anyone with any stake in the T20 circuit to commit to the Test team for any length of time given all the franchise cricket going on all around the world and all through the year.

In the end, there's only so much a coach and a group of players can do when they're up against the skewed economics of a sport determined to maintain a dangerous status quo. West Indies' Test-match batting is a problem, but like so much else in West Indies cricket, it's a symptom of far deeper issues that extend far beyond that region.