This is an excellent India team, BCCI. We know that, all of us. Had they not been a special team, India would not have made it to the final in two World Test Championships.

Across the two cycles, they have won 22 Test matches and lost 11. That win-loss ratio is next to only Australia’s, and far ahead of the rest.

The bowling – the more significant of the two disciplines in Test cricket – has stood up if and when the batting has faltered. India’s bowlers have taken their wickets at a combined average of 23.82, one every 49.5 balls over these cycles. No other team has managed 26 or 55.

These are hallmarks of an excellent side. That goes without saying.

But the fans are not happy. They want a trophy in an ‘ICC event’ – a cross-format umbrella under which global tournaments sit. And the fans matter, for it is they who have made you the richest board in the world.

They do not care whether India have won their last four bilateral Test series against Australia, two home, two away – because in a World Test Championship, Test series are little but league matches.

Just like it did not matter that India had won three consecutive ODI series against New Zealand before the 2019 World Cup semi-final, or four consecutive T20I series against England before the 2022 T20 World Cup semi-final.

They need a trophy to end this barren era.

Under-19 World Cups – India have won three of the last five, across genders – establish that you have been doing a stellar work when it comes to infrastructure, but it does not work for them.

They want the senior men’s side to bring a trophy home. It has to be an ICC Trophy, for the Asia Cup or triangulars do not matter to them.

The failure to win an ICC trophy from nine attempts since 2013 – four times in T20Is, three in ODIs, and now twice in Test cricket – are for a myriad of reasons, but the accumulated effects have added to the frustration.

I know what you will say.

The World Test Championship is unlike any other tournament in the history of cricket. For the league stage, every team hosts three others and tours another set of three for bilateral series, not necessarily of equal lengths.

The top two teams – one of whom may be England – then play the final in England. In no other cricket competition do teams play full series against each other to qualify for a one-off match in a different country.

All that is reasonable, BCCI, but then, so is the fans’ demand for a trophy in a global event.

Of course, the cricketers were fatigued this time. They did not get time to prepare. The window between the three-day IPL final and the WTC final was barely more than a week.

But was it not you who scheduled the IPL? The ICC had announced the venue of the WTC final on September 21, 2022, and the dates on February 8, 2023 – before  you revealed the IPL schedule, on February 17.

India had still not qualified for the final at that point, but they were firm favourites. You knew that, if India did qualify, the Test cricketers featuring in the IPL final would get just over a week to acclimatise themselves to Test cricket with a red Dukes ball in cooler England days after playing 20-over cricket for two months with a white Kookaburra in Indian summer evenings.

Today’s cricketers have to adapt, of course. Yet, it remains a fact that Ajinkya Rahane, Mohammed Shami, Ravindra Jadeja, Shubman Gill and Shardul Thakur had to make that adjustment after contesting an IPL final that did not feature a single Australian.

The IPL could have started early, sometime in the nine-day gap after the third ODI against Australia. It could have begun without one or more members of the ODI squad. There could have been more double-headers.

If none of that was possible, the members of India’s squad for the WTC final could have been barred from playing the Playoffs, or at least part of it.

There is little point in chronicling the what-ifs, but one can always plan ahead. The 2025 final is set to be played in Lord’s. The date will almost certainly be announced well in advance, and it will be – yet again – a few days after the IPL final.

You can schedule the IPL to ensure a proper window between the two events.

In the summer of 2024, India are not playing anything barring the T20 World Cup and a limited-overs tour of Sri Lanka. That makes it an ideal phase for the Test cricketers to spend a summer in the County Championship.

You can always point out that, despite his sustained Sussex success – the tongue-twister is not intended – Cheteshwar Pujara did little in the final, but one Test match is hardly a reasonable sample to base an assessment on.

You may also remind us that India may not qualify for the final. Even if they do not, surely no harm will be done to the cricketers if they get accustomed to conditions where they have not won a Test series since 2007?

And really, when it comes to match practice, perhaps it is time to focus on the India A team again. They played 26 unofficial Tests between February 2017 and February 2020, more than eight a year.

For perspective, over the same period of time, New Zealand – not New Zealand A – played 25 Tests, the West Indies 25, Bangladesh 24, Pakistan 22, and Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, and Ireland 16 between them.

The 2020/21 triumph in Australia was possible because the Indian reserve bench had match-ready reserve cricketers who had honed their skills in alien conditions.

Mohammed Siraj and Shubman Gill had not played a Test match before that tour, but they had been India A players for a long time. They debuted together and emerged from the series as heroes.

On India’s 2018 tour of England, Rishabh Pant was drafted in mid-series into the Test side after making three fifties in three consecutive innings for India A, who were also touring England at that point.

It has been nearly three years since cricket resumed after the pandemic. Even if one deducts six months, or even a year, from that to make allowances for post-pandemic regrouping, India A have played a meagre eight unofficial Tests over the same time – fewer than what they used to in a year.

The Test team is ageing as well. At last week’s final, Shubman Gill was the only cricketer under 29. Until this year began, India had never fielded a Test XI with more than four men of age 34 or more. In the five Tests they have played in 2023, that count reads five for two matches and six for the last three.

Combine the two factors – India growing older as a team and India A playing significantly less than before – and you can anticipate the decline. While the selectors can address the first point by deciding whom to phase out and when, the second can only be sorted by you.

Troubling times lie ahead. The problems are many, but surely you, the richest board, with the world’s deepest talent pool at your disposal, can sort this out.