The Runs That Don't Add Up: Abhimanyu Easwaran's Long First-Class Wait

The ball was turning at Palam, and the ground was close to empty. I have sat at that Delhi venue for first-class matches many times, sometimes with a notebook, sometimes far from the commentary box, letting my eyes and ears do the work. The loudest sound that day was the bat. When a batter makes 56 on a spinning pitch, the scoreboard calls it a number. The ground says something else. The way the bat came out of the fingers of the finger-spinner, the way the front foot arrived on the line, was not a 56 manufactured on a flat track.

I counted the seconds like they were strangers at the door. The owner of that 56 was Abhimanyu Easwaran, 31, captain of Bengal, an opener with 118 first-class matches, and in those same weeks he was out of the Test squad, out of India A, and out of the Rest of India XI. Three doors, closed in one season, at the same time.

He then told reporters that the dream of playing for India is still there. Outside the 22 yards, that sentence is the bravest shot of all. Standing at 31, after three exclusions, saying the word dream on camera is not easy work. For me, that is where the real pull of this story lies. Not the score. The waiting.

First-class cricket has its own clock, one that T20 or one-day cricket does not possess. The tea interval, the wind, the light, the final session of the day all combine into a separate arithmetic. Whoever opens the batting is asked, from the first ball, to absorb the movement of the new ball, to find the seam, to read the pitch. That work is never rewarded in a highlights package. It lives in the folds of whites, and in the selectors' notebooks.

This piece wants to draw a boundary at the outset. Easwaran's story is entirely a red-ball story. The Ranji Trophy 2026-26, the Duleep Trophy, the Irani Cup, India A — all of it sits inside the multi-day first-class structure. Drawing any one-day or T20 inference from this would be a mistake, because the qualities being measured here are innings-building, session attrition, and technique on a deteriorating surface, none of which relate to powerplay or death-over efficiency.

Now the architecture. The staircase into the Indian Test side is not straight. Runs in the Ranji Trophy, then runs for a zonal side in the Duleep Trophy, then the Irani Cup, then matches for India A against foreign opposition, then the Test squad. At each step the opposition strengthens and the scrutiny tightens. Easwaran has been on almost every step. He has played 32 matches for India A since July 2026, which is a rare continuity.

That continuity is what created the central contradiction of his story. His India A numbers read 1,909 runs in 51 innings at 38.18, with six hundreds and seven fifties. The headline then reports that he tops both the India A run-scoring list and the India A century list. It sounds excellent. But there is a gap between those two facts, and the gap is the actual story.

A cricketer who has been given 32 matches will top a run-scoring list. That is arithmetic of opportunity, not proof of excellence. An average of 38.18 across 51 innings is moderate for a specialist top-order batter. In the Indian first-class system, a Test opening slot usually demands an average well into the forties, at least by the working convention among analysts. Easwaran is standing just below that door, not beyond it.

There is one further calculation, which is mine and not in the original report. Thirteen of his 51 innings passed fifty, which is 25.5 per cent. If the six hundreds and seven fifties are taken at roughly 1,150 to 1,200 runs, the remaining 38 innings produced around 700 to 800 runs. In the innings where he does not pass fifty, his implied average sits somewhere between 19 and 22. That is a feast-or-famine profile of an extreme kind.

Why does that number matter? Because an opener's job is not only to score. It is to wear down the new ball, to tire the seamers, to carry the innings into the third and fourth session and give the side a spine. A batter who contributes almost nothing when he fails to reach fifty cannot provide that spine. Selecting him for a Test side means loading the team with a debt of uncertainty. When selectors look at numbers, they are looking at that debt.

And yet there is one thing in this story that speaks louder than the arithmetic: that 56 at Palam. Top-scoring on a spin-friendly surface is not only about runs; it is evidence that the coordination of hands and feet against turning balls is functioning. There is a further point. Playing for Bengal at Palam effectively means a neutral or relocated venue, and selectors generally weigh runs away from home more heavily than runs at home. That single innings is his strongest piece of evidence.

Against it stands the Round 1 return of 34 and 34 not out. Bengal won that match at Kalyani by nine wickets, which means a small target and low pressure. The unbeaten 34 means he stayed in to finish an easy chase. What we learn from that innings about his batting is close to nothing; we learn only that he was not the match-winner. The bowling won that game.

In the Duleep Trophy he made a couple of half-centuries for East Zone. How many runs, against whom, on what surface, is nowhere stated. The phrase half-century carries no information by itself: 51 and 99 share the same headline. Those innings therefore cannot be used as proof of a return to form. Honesty requires saying so.

Eight years is not a long time until you spend it inside a wait. From 2026 to 2026, more than seven years, he wore the India A shirt and asked the same question: how much longer? In that time others entered the Test side, played, were dropped, returned. He stayed on the step just below.

In November 2026 came a pair against South Africa A. That detail is probably the cruellest. For a 31-year-old fringe batter, a pair at that level is not merely a statistic; it is a reputational event. The exits followed: from India A, from Test squad conversation, from the Rest of India XI. Three things moving together are not coincidence.

Meanwhile the Bengal story is unfinished too. Bengal lost the Ranji semi-final to eventual champions Jammu and Kashmir. As captain, Easwaran's season is therefore half-finished in two directions at once: personally a knock on the door of the dream, collectively a stop one step short of the final. This is the most ordinary experience in first-class cricket. Someone loses something, and the ground stays quiet.

There is a silence that only exists when someone forgets how to wait. In the selection room that silence is thicker, because the question is not only how Easwaran is batting. The question is who replaces him. And that is where his age works quietly against him.

Thirty-one. Batters generally peak between 27 and 33, which places him at the far edge of the band. In terms of future value, a 23-year-old opener offers a decade more than he does. A national side is a portfolio, and portfolio managers act on the age curve. That is not prejudice; it is calculation.

So when selectors are reported to be preferring younger batters as back-up opening options, that need not be an injustice against his current ability. Two things can be true together: he is still a good batter, and he is not currently the most rational investment for the Test side. The discomfort sits with the fans, not with the selectors' ledger.

One more element belongs here, and it is usually absent from this kind of report: level adjustment. Domestic red-ball runs are a currency, and that currency loses value every year as more matches are played, pitches flatten and the India A programme expands. A thousand Ranji runs in 2026 and a thousand Ranji runs in 2026 are not the same thing. When selectors look at an India A average of 38.18, they mentally apply a discount. Nobody writes it down, but it happens.

An uncomfortable truth hides there. Easwaran's overall first-class average is probably higher than his India A average, because Ranji bowling attacks are weaker than A-tour attacks. The stronger the opposition, the more his numbers deflate. For a batter, that is the worst kind of gradient: one that falls as the level rises. Test selection is designed to look at exactly that gradient.

Naturally the question arises: has he changed anything technically? The report does not say. What it contains is a narrative of attitude and endurance. That too is a signal. When a batter's own account is only about fight and patience, it usually means there is no new technical answer available, no revised method against left-arm pace, no new solution to the short ball. At 31, finding that answer becomes harder.

This is where my main disagreement begins. The popular version of the story says Easwaran is the victim of injustice, a man who scored runs and was denied. That story is comfortable, because it makes the system guilty and the player innocent. But when the numbers are assembled, a different picture appears. A batter who averages around twenty when he does not pass fifty does not meet the definition of a Test opener. That is a limit of profile, not a failure of system.

My second disagreement is with the headline itself. Topping the runs and centuries lists is excellent news copy and almost useless analysis. A list measures accumulation, not efficiency. A batter given ten years of opportunity will accumulate. Such aggregates are convenient for media because they are easy to understand, and harmful for decisions because they hide the average.

My third disagreement is more uncomfortable. If we treat the selectors' call as irrational, the advice to Easwaran becomes: score more runs. But he is scoring runs; he tops the list. The advice therefore does not work, because the problem is not the quantity of runs but their composition. Tell him to score more and he will score hundreds faster and get out for nought faster. A wrong diagnosis does not produce the right medicine.

My fourth disagreement is about time. Many argue that after so many years of waiting he has earned something. In first-class cricket, waiting is not a currency that can be banked. Long innings, patience, batting through sessions are needed, but they do not create a right to opportunity. This is the cruellest contract in the game: the more you love it, the less entitlement it grants.

And here something must be said that I have thought about for years. First-class cricket has few spectators, but it is not cheap. A Ranji season means travel, hotels, delays and time away from family, none of it shown on camera. For someone who has once knocked on the national door, standing outside that door is the most expensive part, because every exclusion forces him to justify the cost to himself again.

Working behind closed doors in 2026 taught me something I still use. When the crowd leaves, the sound does not change; it becomes clearer. The spinner breathes before releasing, the batter leaves the crease, the leg umpire shifts, and those small sounds become audible. Palam had that same quiet. And in that quiet you can hear 56 runs. You cannot hear 38.18. That is the illusion of first-class cricket. The ground tells a large story; the notebook tells a small one.

So what comes next? The question is not really for Easwaran but for his generation. Indian cricket now has a structural gap between the Ranji Trophy and India A, and established names are disappearing into it, because selectors plan four or five years ahead rather than six months. On that logic there is no room for a player like Easwaran unless he changes the number.

Which number? Not the average. The number is his average in innings below fifty. A batter with 13 scores of fifty-plus in 51 innings will always be asked about the other 38. If that implied average rises from 19 to 30 across one season, the overall figure climbs towards 45 on its own, and nobody needs to top a list. If it does not rise, then 118 matches and 1,909 runs will remain a fine, honest, unfinished chapter.

A dropping is never just a dropping; it is a stranger, one you happen to know. Talking about Easwaran's dream is easy, because he said the words himself. But dreams have no relationship with doors. Doors open on numbers, and numbers are written in cold blood.

Still, I want to leave the ground in a freeze-frame. That evening at Palam. The spinner releases, dust rises, the bat comes down near the front pad, the ball travels towards cover. The stands are nearly empty. The scoreboard says 56. Nobody applauds, because there is nobody there. Only one man, standing at 31 years, holding a bat, and his dream still on that field. That is the most honest moment first-class cricket offers: nobody is watching, and the game goes on.