This is an anomaly, and it is at the heart of everything that has gone down in this series. A visiting batter is the top-scorer. There really aren't very many times that has happened in Test cricket played in India.
Keeping to events in this century, there was Alastair Cook's merciless grind in 2012-13. Steven Smith's extraordinary skill in 2016-17. Hashim Amla's wristy goodness in 2009-10, dismissed just once while scoring 490 runs. Andy Flower's sweep-shot masterclass in 2000-01. Matthew Hayden's sweep-shot masterclass in 2000-01. This is not an exhaustive list, but it does highlight a very useful point. Only one of these five performances went on to help their team win the series.
India's batters found ways to match most of the others. Cheteshwar Pujara was hot on Smith's heels. Rahul Dravid was only 108 runs off Flower despite playing one fewer innings. And VVS Laxman made 2000-01 all about himself with just one trip to the crease. A significant part of their dominance at home came down to their ability to pile on some serious runs, the kind that simply overwhelmed oppositions. England, in 2016-17, began three of the five Tests with first-innings totals of 400 or more. They drew one and lost two - by an innings.
Often enough, these runs came from their top four - from players with an enormous amount of experience, and the stubbornness that comes with it. This time, however, India's closest representative to Rachin Ravindra on top of the leaderboard is a man who hadn't played any international cricket prior to this year.
Sarfaraz Khan's biggest contribution, though - his 150, which forms a lion's share of his total 170 runs - did come from higher up in the batting line-up. In fact, he braved the challenge of walking out earlier than he normally does in first-class cricket, and came good. That innings is doing a lot of legwork in carrying the average of the top four batters for India up to 31.75. Take that away, and in 15 innings, they have contributed 358 runs at an average of 23.87, including three ducks.
New Zealand's Nos. 1-4, meanwhile, are averaging 49, and even if you take Ravindra's century out, it stands a healthy 37 because Devon Conway has two half-centuries; Tom Latham, in Pune, produced some of the most high-quality defensive batting seen in the second innings in India in the modern era; and Will Young, who came in to replace Kane Williamson, perhaps the only irreplaceable player in the team, has offered solidity. Among India's top four, only Yashasvi Jaiswal has faced more balls than Young's 222. Among his own top four, only Latham has faced fewer (210).
Test cricket, when your front men are scoring runs, is bliss. And that is what India will be searching for in Mumbai. Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, who have home bases here, left Pune early. It was understandable. There was nothing more for them there. Just unhealthy reminders of what they had lost: 18 straight series wins, a run unlike any other in the history of the game, and a run to which they had been significant contributors.
Kohli, in particular, has produced absolute gems in dire batting conditions. He made 248 runs in Visakhapatnam from eight years ago, but 81 of those stand separate - as an example of just how devastating his focus is. The ball that turned big couldn't beat him. The ball that went straight couldn't catch him off guard. The ball that kept low was whipped to the boundary. There was a 44 against Australia in Delhi just last year, when he was in control of roughly nine out of 10 balls in conditions where the others could only dream of such a thing. His judgment of length was scary quick, and the decisions that they led to elevated batting into art. In this series, he has been bowled to a Mitchell Santner full toss and caught off a non-turning Glenn Phillips offbreak. It has continued a worrying trend in both his and his team-mates' batting against spin.
Rohit has been a lightning rod for India's defeats. His comments at the post-match press conference in Pune - particularly where he tried to defend the options that he and his team chose - have not gone down well. On social media, people have likened him to Erik Ten Hag, the Manchester United manager who had a habit of telling the media that he was happy with his team's performance even after losses and pointing to past victories to explain their progress. Ten Hag was sacked on Monday. Rohit's situation is slightly more secure, but it hasn't escaped notice that he has led India to four losses in 15 home Tests. His predecessor lost two in 31.
Reducing a player to just their numbers can be a bit unforgiving. Worse, it tends to paint an incomplete picture. In this case, it ignores how well Rohit led the team against England earlier this year when they went 0-1 down, and lost first-choice picks to injury and other complications. All of a sudden, there was a whole bunch of new(ish) faces in the team, and nearly all of them had a hand in turning that series scoreline to read 4-1. One of them, Jaiswal, is shaping up to be a world-beater. Rohit lifted his own performance levels as well, scoring two centuries and a fifty. India need that Rohit and that Kohli now. They need their two best batters to regain their old aura.