In the inevitable Afghanistan free fall that was bound to occur on the third day, India arrived at a result without overstretching the batting and bowling departments. With 14 wickets felled shortly after tea on Monday, Shubman Gill’s men also held time to rearrange the record books with India’s largest ever innings victory – by an innings and 300 runs.
The new PCA Stadium’s subdued Test initiation also successfully soft-launched India’s bid to regain their sub-continental flavours before the World Test Championship (WTC) trip to Sri Lanka in two months.
Adding onto the 412-run innings lead that they sucked out inside 20 overs in the morning would have meant a futile exercise in the heat. Having bundled the visitors at 152, Gill decided it was best to deploy his spin forces back on again, with a sprightly debutant and a poised off-spinner’s drifters muting the Afghan resistance.
Ten minutes after he led his side off the field with a rare feat in his first Test match bowling innings, Manav Suthar was back on, this time with the new ball. The Afghans took aggressive measures to ward off the debutant left-armer, but Suthar had delivered a good account of his strengths already in the morning.
Starting the session with three scalps – the first of which came off just his fourth delivery on day two – Suthar nimbly doubled his tally.
Exercise in control
The 23-year-old from Rajasthan did not seek to impress. Rather, he nailed down his strengths, ball by ball, across 22 overs that jotted 118 dots and six wickets for only 33 runs.
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Save the reputation of the opposition, the figures remain exceptional for the conventional debutant nerves. Suthar achieved a stamp of approval in becoming only the seventh Indian to bag a five-for in his first innings on debut, and only the second to reach the landmark this century.
The restraint on lengths was remarkable even when he swerved the ball from left to right with prodigious drift, as he did to defuse Afghanistan’s brickwall Rahmat Shah for his fifth wicket. For a majority of his innings, No. 4 Shah had played well within his body. Smearing boundaries from simple extensions of his compact defence, Shah’s half-century justified his position as Afghanistan’s record run-scorer in the format.
But when Suthar foxed him on the angle, sliding way past the right-hander’s eyeline outside the off-stump, Shah’s attempted sweep was mangled from around his pads, the ball turning back square to knock the middle-stump.
There was minimal deviation from his drift-and-revs exhibition on length. 98 of his 122 deliveries in the first innings landed between the 4 to 6-metre mark on good length, further pressed into a dangerous corridor in line of the stumps.
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He rarely employed quivers past his usual strengths. Only one delivery in his entire spell was marked as a quicker variation, with just seven instances of an arm ball being released.
Suthar only turned to his secondary line after nine wicket-less overs in the afternoon. Setting up Afsar Zazai on the shorter length, the left-armer darted a quicker 92-kph arm ball that held its line to trap the wicket-keeper before the stumps.
The Afghan surrender was spread flat out when even a composed Shah lost his rhythm, triggering a collapse with a reckless swipe to a loopy Washington Sundar delivery, grabbed by Suthar at mid-off. Producing the sharpest drift of all spinners on show, Sundar (four for 36) soon settled into his stride, proving uncomfortable for the rest of the Afghan order that folded within another 25 runs — from 87 for two to 112 all out following on.
There was confidence back in the bowling room as the batters collectively struck a jumbo first-innings score, staples of India’s 12-year home dominance between two home defeats in 2012 and 2024.
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“When you’re batting in the first innings, try to score 350 on the board every time you get in to bat. No matter where we’re playing, in what kind of conditions. I think there’s enough trust in our bowling group that we can take 20 wickets anywhere, whenever there’s a transition,” skipper Gill reflected in the post-match ceremony.
Back to spin-win ways?
With seven of their remaining nine Tests in the WTC lined up in Asian conditions, the potential association of a new spin quartet was among the primary targets on head coach Gautam Gambhir’s priority. Its newest member Suthar’s 7/62 match figures, armed by understanding spin peers around him, hold the progression in good stead.
“I personally know what Kuldeep [Yadav] and Manav go about with their bowling plans. Obviously, we also know about each other’s strengths, what each of us could bring to the table,” Sundar had told reporters the previous evening.
“Even in preparation, we stick together over a period of time. I think the team will benefit from it in the time ahead.”
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A two-and-a-half-day Afghan mauling isn’t much to write home about. India will not complain as they chart their sub-continental revival, one step at a time.
