2021 - Looking Ahead: Big test awaits Virat Kohli and Co now

India players celebrate the wicket of Bangladesh`s Mominul Haque during the first Test at Indore in 2019. PIC/AFP

The year gone by for the Indian Test team mirrored the despair and anguish heaped on the world by the sweeping Coronavirus pandemic. Debilitating defeats in New Zealand at the start of 2020 and in Australia at the end, before light at the end of the tunnel in Melbourne, sandwiched the loss of the No. 1 Test ranking and the top position in the World Test Championship, sparking doubts regarding their prospects of qualifying for the grand final in Lord's towards the middle of this year.

Equally stern examinations await India over the next 12 months, their Test assignments interrupted by the Twenty20 World Cup they will host in October-November. Not long after they return from Australia in late January, Virat Kohli's men run into formidable England in Chennai and Ahmedabad in a four-Test series, then travel to Old Blighty in the summer for a return four-Test series.

As the year unfolds, they will entertain New Zealand and South Africa, making for a bouquet of Test cricket in stark contrast to 2020, when they only played four matches. The end of this frenetic 12-month period will offer a clearer picture of where the Test team, currently at a crossroads, stands.

Biggest threat
Without disrespect to the remarkable Kiwis or the blow-hot, blow-cold South Africans, both of whom have found Indian conditions hard to master in recent times, England loom as India's biggest threat over the extended eight-Test face-off. Admittedly, India did crush Alastair Cook's side 4-0 when they came calling towards the end of 2016, but much has changed in the last four years.

The presence of the irrepressible Jofra Archer lends a new dimension to the England attack otherwise expertly manned by James Anderson and Stuart Broad. Archer's pace through the air and his propensity to extract disconcerting bounce even from placid surfaces has already claimed many an illustrious victim, his ebullience, the final jigsaw of a puzzle the English have been trying to solve for a while.

Strong Pace battery
India will, however, look inwards. They have a pace battery comparable with the best, and back-up strength that could yet be the envy of the world.

Gone are the days when India's answer to fiery pace and significant movement was timid and limp; especially over the last couple of seasons, coinciding with the rise of Jasprit Bumrah as the spearhead of the attack, they have fought fire with searing fire to complement their already glittering spin crown in the guile-laden fingers of R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja.

Almost incredibly, it's their batting that India will train more attention on. Since his phenomenal run at home in 2019 post his elevation as opener, Rohit Sharma hasn't played a Test. He and Mayank Agarwal seemed to have finally ended the quest for a stable, durable, dependable opening pair, but with injuries dictating otherwise, India have found precious little from their openers in overseas Tests. The experienced middle-order of Cheteshwar Pujara, the captain and Ajinkya Rahane are proven performers in all lands, but for them to deliver at peak efficiency away from their backyard, they need the cushion of sizeable opening partnerships.

Nowhere in the last decade have India been more schooled than in England. Consistently disappointing outings in 2011 (0-4), 2014 (1-3) and 2018 (1-4) must be hard to digest for a team that prides itself on treating every venue as a home ground, but whose intent hasn't translated into sustained success on foreign lands.

The mid-summer sojourn to England will not define the year, but for India to justify the hype around their Test 'exploits', they can't afford a fourth straight series surrender.