Team India’s dominance of Australia in the just-completed four-Test series will long be remembered not just for the convincing win but also for several other reasons. CRICKET, the only sport that excites this country of more than a billion people, is on a roll. Team India is now on course to dethrone Australia as the undisputed champions of the cricketing world.
Their convincing 2-0 win in the just-concluded four-Test Border-Gavaskar Trophy over the Aussies further consolidated their claim to be world-beaters.
The T-20 champions, who had also done well in One Day Internationals (ODI) have now emerged as a perfect amalgam of talented youth and fighting-fit seniors. Small wonder, then, that the entire nation is feting them as the all-conquering heroes.
Ricky Ponting’s men had gone into the series as favourites, even though the Aussies were in the process of regrouping after the retirement of a number of players.
Their record was on their side. They topped the International Cricket Council (ICC) Test rankings. Were the proud owners of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy since 2001 and had never lost a series against any country without at least winning a Test since 1999.
And here they barely managed to draw two Tests while they were humiliated in the other two. Their pace attack lacked penetration while the lone spinner came into play only in the last Test at Nagpur. Ponting also made a hash of captaincy.
Slow over rate in the last Test caused him to introduce part-time bowlers while regular attack bowlers gnashed their teeth, a vital factor that allowed India to walk away with a win in a match that the previous day appeared going the Australian way.
From the Indian perspective, the series was notable for several other reasons too. Sachin Tendulkar climbed yet another peak in his long career, becoming the lone batsman in world cricket to have scored 12,000 runs in Test cricket. The Little Master also notched 40 centuries in his Test career, another world record.
Again, it was during the series that ace spinner Harbhajan Singh became the third Indian to have taken 300 Test wickets. And it was during the series that the former captain and long-time Indian opener, Saurav Ganguly, reached the 7,000-mark.
But the series also marked the retirement from international cricket of Ganguly. India’s most successful captain, Ganguly took over amidst the match-fixing scandal in 2000. Under his leadership, Team India recovered much of its lost prestige.
Mixing aggression with tact, he stood up to the challenge of the so-called “invincibles” as Steve Waugh’s Australians had come to be called back in the 2000-01 series.
In a tribute to Ganguly, The Times of India, India’s largest-selling English daily, wrote editorially, “... Under Ganguly, the Indian team shook off the image of being tigers at home and pushovers overseas. “
Under the sub-heading ‘Test Cricket will never be as dramatic as it was with Saurav Ganguly’, The Indian Express, another influential English daily, commented that “... more than Ganguly’s cricket, it was his drama that divided his audiences into camps. Master of the off-side, maverick strategist, groomer of lost young cricketers, Ganguly also possessed an instinct and a flair for drama.”
The famous Ganguly moment etched in the memory of every cricket fan is when after a surprise win over England at the Lord’s in the tri-series in 2002 he took off his shirt and waved bare-chested to the fans below in a gesture of defiance.
Fans thought this was a fitting reply to the English who had done the same earlier after winning a tough match in Mumbai, but the purists panned Ganguly for “unbecoming behaviour”. In subsequent interviews Ganguly has regretted that chest-baring incident, though for diehard fans it announced the arrival of a new and confident Team India.
Easily the most well-known Bengali, Ganguly, popularly known as Prince of Kolkata or Dada, was given a hero’s welcome upon his arrival in his hometown from Nagpur.
Local media is feverishly speculating his next move. At 36, he is unlikely to settle for a quiet life, away from the public eye. He will continue to play domestic cricket and there is some talk of his opening a cricket academy to train young talent.
Even politics is not ruled out, there being some talk of his being fielded against the state’s foremost opposition leader, Mamta Banerjee, of the Trinamool Congress.
Another Indian captain bid farewell to his international career during the just-concluded series against India. Thirty-eight-year-old Anil Kumble, the third-highest wicket-keeper in world cricket with 619 scalps, announced his retirement during the course of the drawn Delhi Test after he was hurt and required 11 stitches on the wounded left hand.
A quintessential gentleman-cricketer, who allowed his bowling to do the talking – though he is a rare spinner to have scored a Test century against England – Kumble was honest enough to admit that his “body was no longer what it was” and it was better for him to retire than to cling on and be asked to call it a day.
With Ganguly and Kumble retired, focus would now shift to ace batsman Rahul Dravid. Nicknamed “The Wall” for his stolid batting, the former Indian captain has not been among the runs lately, failing miserably in the last series as well.
Given a number of youngsters waiting for a break, Dravid cannot count on his super batting averages to retain his place in the team. He will have to show results to retain his place in the side.
If another senior, Sachin Tendulkar, is guaranteed his place in the team, it is because he invariably manages to come good just when whispers begin about his utility. After his back-to-back centuries against Australia in the recent series, the 36-year-old might have firmed up his place in Team India for the 2010 World Cup.
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