Top of the Charts, 38.18 in the Shadow: Abhimanyu Easwaran's Red-Ball Arithmetic and India's Selection Calculus

The ball was turning at Palam. That afternoon I opened my ball-by-ball log because I wanted to hold on to the gap between what the scorecard was showing and what was actually happening in the middle. Before Abhimanyu Easwaran fell for 56, the Services spinners had held the same length for several overs in a row, and he kept pressing forward to break it. One ball he found the boundary; the next he nearly edged to slip. That double edge is the most information-dense moment of his season. The scorecard says one thing; the four-day sessions say another.

I have kept a red-ball scorebook for years — not just runs, but which over they came in, how many balls he survived against which bowler, how often he played and missed. In that book, the 56 at Palam weighs differently from any 56 on a flat deck. The surface was spin-friendly, the opposition spinners held their lines, and he top-scored. That single number tells you his defence and footwork against spin are usable at Test level. But the question does not end there. The question is why a number this bright from one match is not reaching the Indian selectors' table.

Watching Indian domestic cricket from Bangladesh is a bit like looking through a telescope from a distance. My job, though, works in my favour here — I do not watch highlights, I watch scorebooks. Over fifteen years I have learned that when a player's career starts sliding from the top, the story the media writes and the story the data tells are often two different stories. In Easwaran's case the gap is unusually clear.

Context: one season, three stages

Bengal's Ranji Trophy 2026-26 season opened against Delhi at Kalyani. A nine-wicket win, a small target, a comfortable fourth-innings chase. Easwaran made 34 in the first innings and 34 not out in the second. The informational value of those two innings is low, because the match was won by the bowling — in a small chase there is no scoreboard pressure on the batter. Staying unbeaten is creditable, but it is not proof that he is in form.

Round two brought the 56 against Services at Palam. That match is different because of the venue. Bengal's home fixture was played away at Palam in Delhi — effectively a neutral or relocated venue, unfamiliar conditions. Selectors weight that kind of innings more heavily than home runs, because it exposes a batter's capacity to adjust. The pitch was spin-friendly, the opposing spin attack was functional, and he still top-scored. That detail I noted separately in the book.

A couple of half-centuries for East Zone in the Duleep Trophy was the third stage. Here is the first large gap. We do not know the size of those half-centuries, who the opposition was, or what the pitches were like. Until that information arrives, they cannot be used as evidence of a form upturn. An unnamed fifty and a named 56 are two different weights, even though headlines make them look identical.

Beyond those three stages sits the selection reality. A 31-year-old opener with 118 first-class matches, 32 of them for India A since July 2026. In November 2026, a pair against South Africa A. After that: out of the Test squad picture, out of India A, out of the Rest of India XI. Bengal lost the Ranji semi-final to eventual champions Jammu and Kashmir.

That timeline needs to be held in view, because the headline says the dream of playing for India is "still there." Having a dream and being in the selection arithmetic are not the same thing.

The core: what topping the charts actually means

Here is a statistic that looks like terminal success and reads like something else underneath. Easwaran tops both the India A run-scoring list and the India A century list. In a headline, that is dominance. But the numbers behind the top spot are these: 1,909 runs in 51 innings at 38.18, with six centuries and seven fifties.

For a specialist top-order batter, an average of 38.18 does not mean being at the top — it means having been given the opportunity to be at the top. He leads those two lists because he has been handed 32 India A matches since 2026, which is opportunity, not outperformance per innings relative to his peers. This is the most common media-friendly trap in the Indian domestic structure: aggregate run lists rise in direct proportion to opportunity, and then that list is read as proof of quality.

Now do the real arithmetic. Six centuries, call it 110 each on average — 660. Seven fifties at roughly 60 each — 420. Together about 1,080 runs from those 13 innings. Subtract that from 1,909 and roughly 829 runs remain across the other 38 innings, an implied average of about 19 to 22 in the innings where he did not pass fifty.

That is a brittle scoring profile. When he passes fifty he goes big; when he does not, he barely scores at all. What is a Test opener's job? Surviving the new ball, blunting swing and seam through the first hour, holding an end so the team can build. The value of that job is not in the average, it is in the floor on a bad day. An opener who makes 3 and 8 in consecutive innings sends the number three in early, twice. The volatility of that 19 hiding inside the 38.18 is the actual problem.

The conclusion is plain: topping a chart is not the same as being ready, and being ready is the only ticket into a Test side.

Look now at the conversion profile. Thirteen scores of fifty or more in 51 innings — 25.5 percent of innings. A century roughly every 8.5 innings. The conversion rate is respectable; the average is not. The distinction matters. A batter who makes fifties regularly but cannot turn them into hundreds is usually called incomplete. Easwaran's problem runs the other way: when he gets a hundred he goes big, but the gap between those innings is too wide.

The 56 at Palam softens that picture a little. Top-scoring on a spin-friendly surface is a surface-adjusted performance — a signal of run-making capacity in difficult conditions. But one signal does not break a trend. This is where I fall back on an old habit: I do not make tactical claims without at least three verified numbers. Right now the file holds 34, 34 not out, 56, and two unnamed fifties — four to six innings in all. That is statistically non-diagnostic, and anyone who presents it as diagnostic is building a story, not an analysis.

The age line and the selection discount

Age 31. For an opener the peak band is roughly 27 to 33. He is standing at the outer edge of that band, not inside it. This needs saying plainly, because emotion and strategy blend at exactly this point.

When selectors prioritise "younger batters as back-up opening options," that is not automatically an injustice. It is succession planning. If a pipeline holds a 31-year-old and a 24-year-old with broadly similar returns, choosing the 24-year-old is defensible portfolio management. Two things can be true at once here: Easwaran is still a good batter, and Easwaran is no longer India's future opening solution.

I want to be careful here, because I have a bias of my own toward continuity. Long-game beat keeping has taught me to mark precisely where continuity breaks. For Easwaran the break came in November 2026, the pair against South Africa A. For a 31-year-old fringe player, a pair at that level is not just a bad match, it is a reputational event. Selectors hold on to innings like that, especially when the decision is hard and the alternatives are young.

There is a subtlety here that outside discussion usually gets backwards. Many assume he was dropped because of the pair. My reading is different: the phasing-out had already begun, and the pair handed it a convenient narrative. Board, league, pitch and fan culture are four separate layers with four separate calculations, and flattening them is how Indian selection gets read through the lens of European club football.

The contrarian read: what is being misread from outside

Now to the point where the outside reading and the internal reality separate.

The first misread: "He is the victim of an injustice." Topping a list and being dropped feels like injustice — that argument works on emotion, not on arithmetic. Topping a list and the ceiling of an average are two different things, and selectors look at the average. An India A average of 38.18 means that against international A-tour bowling he is not a star on a per-innings basis.

The second misread: "The dream is still there, so the route back is open." That sentence is newsworthy, but tactically it can be read the other way too. When a player, asked to explain himself, talks about attitude, patience and endurance rather than a specific skill upgrade — remodelling footwork, fixing a vulnerability against left-arm pace, widening the off-side scoring zone — that is itself information. It suggests that in his own assessment the problem is circumstance, not skill. If skill is not the problem, there is no improvement roadmap, only waiting. And at 31, waiting is an expensive luxury.

The third misread is the most dangerous: "34 and 34 not out against Delhi means he is back in form." I open the book and check — those two innings came in a nine-wicket win, on a small target, in a pressure-free setting. Making 34 in an easy chase is not proof of form, it is proof only that he did not waste an easy situation. The difference is not small.

One more thing I have seen many times: domestic red-ball runs are a currency, and that currency is revalued according to the opposition. Ranji Trophy bowling attacks and international A-tour bowling attacks are not the same thing. His overall first-class average is therefore probably higher than his India A average, because runs come more easily against weaker opposition and less easily against stronger. As the opposition hardens, his numbers deflate. That gradient is unfavourable for Test selection, and selectors are certainly applying that level-adjusted discount.

When I worked on Morocco's defence I learned something: a system that saved you once is a system memory keeps bringing back. In cricket the reverse happens — institutional memory holds on to the failed innings longer than the successful ones. That is Easwaran's biggest handicap, and it is not a conspiracy, it is an organisation's ordinary memory system.

What to watch: the next internal signal

For the rest of this season I will watch three things, none of them the raw score.

First, conversion. The rate at which fifties become hundreds. If he produces two big centuries in the next five or six innings, the average problem is partly solved, because averages rise on big innings, not small ones.

Second, runs on difficult surfaces. The 56 at Palam is one sample. Two or three more innings of that kind on spin-friendly or seam-friendly pitches are needed before it becomes a trend. The first six overs against the new ball are not a pause; they are a score waiting to be read — and that is exactly where an opener is examined.

Third, the selection signal. A return to India A, a return to the Rest of India XI, or an opportunity elsewhere in red-ball cricket — whichever of the three arrives will say whether the institution still sees him in the pipeline.

Every selection cycle has a tempo; most commentary dances off-beat. Easwaran's tempo is slow now, but it has not stopped. The question is not whether the dream is still there. The question is whether an institution will call again on a 31-year-old opener standing in the shadow of 38.18, or whether this season turns out to be the highest note he reaches before the next opener arrives. He writes the answer himself, but the pen has to be picked up on a difficult surface, not an easy target.