Abhimanyu Easwaran: Why the 38.18 Average, Not the Chart-Topping, Is the Real Story

I went back to the tape for the 56 at Palam and stayed for something else entirely. On paper the innings reads cleanly: Bengal's opener, top score on a difficult surface, patience against spin. What the scorecard does not record is the sequence that followed within three weeks. Out of the Test squad conversation, out of the India A set-up, out of the Rest of India XI. Three exits arriving together usually trace back to one number, and that number is not 56. It is 38.18.

Bengal's 2026-26 Ranji campaign opened against Delhi at Kalyani, a nine-wicket win built on bowling. Easwaran made 34 and 34 not out. Round two brought 56 against Services at Palam. In between came "a couple of half-centuries" for East Zone in the Duleep Trophy, magnitudes unnamed. The season ended in a semi-final defeat to eventual champions Jammu and Kashmir. That is the whole of the on-field evidence, and it amounts to four to six innings.

Then there is the process. Thirty-two India A matches since July 2026, 118 first-class games overall. Those 32 caps belong at the centre of any selection argument, because in Indian cricket India A is a queue and Rest of India is a signal. Falling out of the queue usually means one thing: someone younger is standing behind you.

The curiosity sits here. 1,909 India A runs across 51 innings, six centuries and seven fifties, an average of 38.18. He tops both the runs and the centuries charts. Topping a chart is evidence of opportunity, not evidence of ability. Thirteen scores above fifty in 51 innings means a century roughly every eight and a half innings, which is respectable conversion. But 38.18 is not the number that clears a specialist top-order batter's Test threshold.

My own calculation, which does not appear in the source article, is an innings-level one. Six hundreds and seven fifties account for roughly 1,150 to 1,200 runs. The remaining 38 innings account for perhaps 700 to 750. His average in innings where he does not pass fifty lands near 19. That is a feast-or-famine profile. A Test opener's job is to absorb the new ball and blunt lateral movement; brittleness is not a small flaw there, it is a disqualifier.

Add the pair against South Africa A in November 2026. For a 31-year-old fringe batter, a pair at that level is a reputational event rather than a routine failure, and it is the most plausible proximate cause of the simultaneous exits from India A, the Test picture and the Rest of India XI.

Yet the 56 at Palam is the most information-dense point in the entire story, and almost everyone skips it. Top-scoring on a spin-friendly pitch is a surface-adjusted performance, and it speaks to a red-ball opener's core competency: playing spin on a turning track. The 34 and 34 not out at Kalyani came inside a nine-wicket chase, low-pressure and low-information, telling us only that he was not the match-winner. Nobody in the selection debate measures the gap between result and process.

Here I have to turn the argument on itself. At 31, as an opener, inside a peak band of 27 to 33, the preference for younger back-up openers is succession planning rather than bias. Both things can be true. The strongest counterargument is equally real: 38.18 is already a deflated figure, because India A attacks are sharper than Ranji attacks. If selectors discount Ranji runs as inflated currency and then discount India A runs again, the discount compounds.

The genuine blind spot is simpler. Home and away splits, pace versus spin splits, day-night splits: none are published. The debate runs on aggregates while the decision should run on splits. Where the number matters most, on a surface like Palam against the new ball and left-arm pace, there is no split at all. And the article contains not one line about technical remodelling; the player's own account is about endurance and attitude. Silence is a signal, and nobody has scouted it.

So what do I watch next season? First, whether he bats at three, and whether that reads as age pressure or deliberate restructure. Second, whether a Palam-style innings appears anywhere away from home soil. Watch the first twenty balls, not the score: how far the front foot travels, how open the body stays against left-arm pace. Twenty-two bodies, and the only thing still moving was the idea. This season the idea was 38.18 against 56, and four to six innings will decide which one the selectors believed.