No sooner had Ashes 2023 ended that Nasser Hussain said next year’s five-match India-England Test series, starting in January, would be Bazball’s next trial. Bazball versus spin? No hassles, you may say in India as so many bang the pub table, joyfully. Well might it have indicated the English cognoscenti’s previously understated acceptance, reluctant or not, of Twenty20 batting in Test cricket’s context as a viable strategic plan. It could also have exceeded the joy of an English experiment withstanding the rigours of a top-class contest implicitly to suggest a heart-warming moral triumph over the perpetually aggressive and abrasive “Aussies,” who had retained the urn simply because they won it the last time around. Given the bitter and serious disputes the series had intermittently been marked by, the essentially conservative establishment in Blighty is perhaps not inclined to give New Zealander Brendon McCullum full marks for the combative durability of Ben Stokes’ squad.

But if Hussain hopes Bazball to end, or even appear to pose a serious threat, in the obvious excitement of a 2-2 draw, to India’s virtual invincibility in recent times at home, it could perhaps be a bridge too far. Bazball, as of now, is still a matter of nuanced application and there are those stalwarts who will refuse to go even that far. In the Ashes matches, for instance, England’s scoring rates fluctuated quite appreciably. Also, McCullum’s theory obviously reckons with the different degrees of technique-related insecurity Twenty20 breeds in batsmen trying to get on top of the bowling. After the Ashes, Nathan Lyon said that he had not really seen much of Bazball himself: his personal scoreline against it was 2-0, implying the Australian victories in the first two Tests. If Lyon revelled in bowling England into submission until he was injured, India’s spin attack, led by Ravichandran Ashwin, will surely enjoy itself having been pitted against the Australians, many of whom faltered irredeemably against them playing in this country, even if designer wickets are not called for. Hit-or-miss batting against Indian spin can only be a suicidal ploy seeded by desperation.

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Also, India will have a high-quality new-ball attack blended into their contrapuntal response to whatever the men from England concoct, presumably reliant in the main on swing, even though Rohit Sharma’s team-mates include bowlers with a relish for raw pace, Mohammad Siraj to name but one. Swing catches the T20 swashbuckler on the wrong foot quite often, as the Indian Premier League has sometimes been known to underline. India may have lost two World Test Championship finals but there are no other teams to have made as many summit showdowns, which is more than you can say about the Australians or the English. India will not really look around for the rabbit hole when up against Bazball. They will be there with the return wallop.