(Trinidad Express) New Zealand’s upset wins in the first two Tests of the three-match series in India have re-opened the discussion on dominance in the traditional format of the game.
Those results ended the Indians’ home run of 18 consecutive series wins which started with a 4-0 thrashing of Australia in early 2013 and culminated in a 2-0 whipping of Bangladesh last month.
They won 42 of 53 matches played over that period for a winning percentage of 79.2, losing just four times and drawing on seven occasions.
Two other teams —Australia and West Indies— would appear to have arguments of their own in relation to the extent of home dominance, for while India’s unbeaten series run lasted almost 12 years, Australia’s extended to 15 years (1993 to 2008) while the West Indies went 20 years unbeaten in the Caribbean from the drawn series with England in 1974 to a 3-1 triumph against the same English in 1994.
And that’s when I thought I had a golden opportunity to highlight what I believe to be an ongoing bias by the dominant cricket media —meaning England and Australia— so as to diminish the achievements of the great West Indies teams of decades past.
Fuel for that fire came from cricket writer Tim Wigmore of the “Daily Telegraph” newspaper of London when he wrote on Saturday, in the immediate aftermath of the Black Caps wrapping up the second Test in Pune, that New Zealand had broken an Indian sequence of series victories which “was even more dominant than the home performances of West Indies’ 1980-95 team or Australia’s 1995-2007 side.”
He had to be part of that conspiracy, I thought, because the West Indies’ home unbeaten run was 20 years, not 15. The 1980 to 1995 period that he was referencing was the record that remains unchallenged in the history of the Test game: 15 years unbeaten anywhere in Test series.
So I dived into the numbers for all three teams fully expecting to reveal another bogus narrative only to realise that, apart from the skewed 1980-95 reference, the assessment of the comprehensive nature of India’s home dominance was, if not 100 per cent accurate, a fair representation of the facts.
India weren’t just unbeaten at home, they won every one of their 16 series plus the one-off Tests against Bangladesh and Afghanistan during that period.
Those triumphs included three series wins each against the Aussies and the English and two over South Africa at a time when the Proteas were one of the more formidable units in the Test game.
So that was comprehensive dominance any which way you looked at it.
By contrast, while the West Indies’ unbeaten series run at home was seven years longer it only translated into an additional 14 matches compared to India’s 53.
Also, the Caribbean team drew two series, the one already mentioned against England in 1974 and the fierce three-match duel with Pakistan in 1988 which ended 1-1.
Overall, it has to be acknowledged that while the West Indies kept on winning home series —15 of them and the historic one-off against the South Africans in 1992— they won only 35 of those 67 Tests for a winning percentage of 52.2.
Of course, the 5-0 “Blackwash” of England in 1986 and the 3-0 drubbing of Australia two years earlier stand out as supreme examples of Caribbean dominance.
In most cases though, the margins of series victories were one or two matches.
When it comes to the Australians however, the extent of their unbeaten series run, bookended by 2-0 successes over neighbours New Zealand in 1993 and 2008, runs a very close second to India when it comes to home dominance in Test match cricket.
During that period the Aussies played 90 Tests at home, winning 66 for a win percentage of 73.3. It involved 27 series and one one-off match against an ICC World XI in 2005.
If you’re wondering how that one match came about, it was an attempt by the game’s administrators then to bring context to Test cricket by having the top-ranked team at time, in this case Australia, host a World XI as a showpiece event every two years.
But the idea never caught on and now we have what appears to be a more viable Test championship where the top two teams on the points table after two years meet in a one-off final in England.
Australia are the current champions after defeating India in the 2023 final.
Those two teams are again in the reckoning for the 2025 final while the West Indies, once at the top of every list in any discussion on Test match cricket, are left to reflect on past glories and hope that the impressive numbers then are not obliterated by the modern era’s dominant teams.
