What a feeling! It’s worth describing, yet strangely indescribable. Today I understand what the phrase, “Chest swelling with pride” means. Today I know why people have this silly smile on their faces when they are happy. Today I know why the country will talk cricket and nothing but cricket and even those who hate the game or are indifferent to it, will also indulge all those who somehow bring the subject up. Today I know why the diabetics will willingly accept mithai.

Today is the day India beat Pakistan for the first time in their country, a feat that has never been achieved by any other Indian team.

Yes, there was great joy when the team won the one-day series, but the connoisseurs know that Test matches are the real thing and to win a Test, the team has to play well not just on one day but all the days.

Rahul Dravid and his boys have done what no Indian team has done. They have fulfilled the unfulfilled dreams of all those players who have gone to Pakistan and come back without a victory.

From up in the heavens, Lalaji Amarnath and Vinoo Mankad will be smiling for they were the Manager and Captain of the first Indian team to Pakistan in 1954-55. Those were of course the days before the third-country umpires came in and anybody who toured the subcontinent had horror stories to tell about the quality of the officiating. Mind you, the officiating in the rest of the world was hardly better, but somehow a developing region was easy to be identified with less honesty than the developed world.

Only nobody has yet been able to explain why there are petty crimes apart from serious ones in the developed world if their integrity is related to the country’s wealth. A superiority complex also helped maintain that image.

More than any country, Pakistan have always been the hardest team to beat in their den and not too many teams have done that. It does take something special to do so and this Indian team has that. It’s got a combination that believes in itself and has the confidence to take on anything. Even in the absence of its regular captain, the team has not faltered and has adapted to the change in leadership without a problem.

It’s never easy to suddenly take instructions from a new person, though of course Rahul Dravid has been part of the team for a long time and its vice-captain for as long as Ganguly has been skipper.

He never missed a trick and his handling of the team, the planning, the bowling changes, the field placements, was spot on. He never eased the pressure on the opposition and was unafraid to try something different and was innovative in a way that many thought was not possible, because as a batsman he sticks to the basics and hardly ever plays an ugly shot. But then the same can be said about Virender Sehwag, who many never thought capable of a 200, leave alone being the first Indian to join the 300-club.

Then of course, there was the Little Champion whose masterful innings built brick-by-brick ensured that the start given by Sehwag was not thrown away.

Now, when it was the bowlers’ turn, they didn’t let the batsmen down. They kept pegging away on a surface that had the fast men of Pakistan huffing and puffing. There was the energy of the new kids on the block Irfan Pathan and Balaji, and the wily Kumble, who was unlucky not to pick more victims in the first innings, made sure that he more than made up with his variety that brought him another five-plus haul, and the Little Champion could not be kept out of action with the ball, so also the prince of Indian cricket, the aptly named Yuvraj Singh, who got the two in-form batsmen out, one with his deceptively simple-looking spinners and then the killer blow, picking up and throwing the Pakistani captain out. Parthiv Patel also played his part, keeping with an injured thumb and showing wonderful commitment to the cause.

See, I tried to describe the feeling but couldn’t do half a decent job. No matter, for Rahul and the boys have done us old fogies proud and fulfilled our dreams and if they go on to win the series the entire Indian cricketing community will be eternally grateful.