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Tendulkar's 200th Test was in November 2013, his last, and in the eleven years since, no Indian batter has come within thirty Tests of his record of two hundred, and the reason is the reason that the calendar has changed, and the calendar is the thing that nobody blames.
Gill's Test average in 2026 is 52, up from 33 in 2024. The number that explains the rise is the number of balls he has left, which is 147 in his last 15 innings, more than any Indian opener in the same period. Here is the form sheet and the numbers behind it.
In his last fifteen Test innings, Jaiswal has six scores over fifty, two hundreds, and an average of fifty-eight. He has also left more balls than any other Indian opener in the same period, which is the number that explains the other numbers.
Kohli's 2026 Test average is 68, the highest of any year in his career. The number is not the number of a player in decline. The number is the number of a player who has stopped chasing the balls outside off and who has, in the stopping, found the runs that the chasing cost him.
Bumrah took seven wickets in the second innings at the Wanderers, the second-best haul by an Indian quick in South Africa, and India's chase of 257 was built on a Jaiswal hundred that nobody expected to survive the morning session.
Gill made one hundred and twenty-eight at Headingley, his first overseas Test hundred, and the innings was notable less for the runs than for the balls he left, which were forty-one, and which is more than he had left in his previous four Tests combined.
