Relaxed Indians raring to give a fitting reply to England's Bazball

There is talk of belief, of not panicking, of India knowing exactly what they would need to do to break this tide and regain ground

- Somshuvra Laha

For the countless times India's home invincibility-30 wins and three losses before this series in the last 10 years-has been drummed up, rarely has it grasped the extent of what it actually took to accomplish this spectacular ascendancy.

Each of those three losses came when the tour was alive - the first Test against Australia in Pune in 2017, the series opener against England in Chennai in 2021 and Australia again, in the third Test of the 2023 tour. And every time India won the series. Will this tour of England rewrite history? Only if India implode inexplicably, both with bat and ball. And that's something that hasn't happened since 2012, the last time India have lost two home Tests in a row.

In the aftermath of Joe Root sweeping his way to a double hundred in the first Test of 2021, India did what they do best in the next Test, scoring runs and taking wickets on a raging turner. If the tone was set by a scintillating hundred from Rohit Sharma, Ravichandran Ashwin applied finishing touches to that demolition with eight wickets as well as a second innings hundred as India consigned England to a 317-run thrashing.