India’s batting riches are turning selection into a happy problem
Five fifties in one declared innings, two wicketkeepers in the same XI and a No. 7 making runs: India’s Test batting has become so deep that the only real debate is who to leave out.
Jun 7, 2026
Yashasvi Jaiswal nicked off down the leg side for very little on the opening day in New Chandigarh, and it barely registered. India still declared on 564 for eight. When your most exciting opener can fail and the total still climbs past 550, you are not dealing with a batting problem. You are dealing with the opposite, and it is the kind of problem most Test sides would give a great deal to have.
Five batters passed fifty in that innings. Shubman Gill made 126, KL Rahul brought up his hundred, and Sai Sudharsan and Rishabh Pant both stopped on 81. Washington Sundar, coming in at seven, finished unbeaten on 52. That is depth you can feel, runs arriving from the captain down to a man batting below several frontline bowlers in other line-ups.
A queue that keeps growing
Gill is the obvious centre of it. He has piled up 983 runs in his last nine Tests at an average of just over 70, the sort of run that turns a talented batter into the first name on the team sheet and the captain on top of it. Rahul has quietly become the steady one, doing the unglamorous job at the top while younger players get the headlines.
Behind them the names stack up. Sai Sudharsan kept his place despite a thin time in England and South Africa last year, the management choosing to give the 24-year-old a longer run rather than reach for Devdutt Padikkal, who is waiting for exactly the kind of opening that injuries and dips in form eventually create. Someone in that middle order is always one quiet series away from making way, and there is always a replacement with a domestic mountain of runs behind him.
Two keepers and no tail
The clearest sign of the riches is lower down. Pant kept wicket and batted at five, and India still found room for Dhruv Jurel at six, a wicketkeeper good enough to hold a place as a specialist batsman. Plenty of countries cannot find one keeper who can bat. India are picking two and asking one of them to do it purely with the bat.
Then comes Washington Sundar at seven, which is the part that should worry opponents most. His fifty meant India had genuine batting down to the seventh wicket, the tail pushed so far back that bowling them out twice becomes a long afternoon’s work. A side that bats this deep can declare early, attack with the field, and still trust the runs are there if a top-order wobble arrives.
None of this guarantees anything against stronger opposition than Afghanistan, and a flat pitch flatters everyone. The real tests will come away from home, where these same players have looked far more ordinary. But the selection headache itself is the story. India are no longer hunting for batters to fill gaps. They are trying to work out which of several good ones to leave out, and that is a problem worth having.