Was 2024 a satisfactory year for Indian men's cricket? That's a tough one to answer. After all, it was a year in which the team became T20I world champions after 17 years and also dominated the shortest format (24 wins in 26 games). But it was also a year of historic lows in both Test and ODI cricket. For the first time in 45 years, India couldn't register a single win in ODI cricket in a calendar year, albeit they played only three ODIs (vs Sri Lanka and one match ended in a tie).

The memory that is the freshest in our minds is that of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, which rounded off a rather disappointing year. Ironically, it had begun with a lot of promise with a historic win in Cape Town. India had to hand over the trophy to the Aussies for the first time in a decade. Overall, 2024 was a year that exposed some rather large chinks in India's Test armour. India won only one of their last seven Tests last year. That is not a statistic any top team would like to claim. Losing a three-match Test series at home 0-3 for the first time was a real body blow. As former India captain Anjum Chopra told me during a chat recently, “This will be a bitter pill to swallow for the longest time because losing is one thing, but not being in the contest is another thing altogether.”

‘Not being in the contest' is a great way of summarising Team India's forgettable performances in both ODI and Test cricket in the year gone by. There were some highs, of course, such as the Test wins in Cape Town and Perth, Jasprit Bumrah's heroics in Australia, his being crowned the most successful Indian Test bowler on Australian soil and finishing the year with the maximum number of wickets across all teams and formats. Likewise, Yashasvi Jaiswal finished as the second-highest Test run-getter in the world, and Rohit Sharma averaged over 52 in ODIs. Even so, the fact remains that 2024 was a subpar year for Indian ODI and Test cricket. So, what are the big lessons that the powers that be should learn in 2025?

The first ODI assignment of the year will be against England, at home. It's a three-match series........

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