A win is a win, and while there will be plenty who felt that a ‘2-0’ win sounds better than a ‘1-0’ win, the fact that a series that looked difficult to save after the Lord’s Test was won. The turnaround credit has to go to the skipper Rahul Dravid, the senior players and the coaching staff. The experience and advice of Chandu Borde was also invaluable to the younger members, with whom he spent a lot of time. It was therefore a total team effort, a term that is often a cliché, but was absolutely spot-on for this tour. Just about every member of the side had a role to play in the win, though as in any successful team, all eleven players can never be successful. Even Australia seldom have all eleven players succeeding for the opportunities to do so may be limited to few.
As in any successful venture, a good foundation and platform needs to be there for the winning structure to be built much easier for the rest. The Jaffer-Karthik partnership has blossomed since South Africa, and they now bid fair to be one of the more successful ones Indian cricket has had. Karthik, the more energetic player, was a revelation in the manner in which he made the adjustments to his technique, and more crucially, to his approach to batting. Jaffer, once he overcomes the early lethargy, brings an elegance and solidity to the crease that can only be good for the nerves in the dressing room. They got the team off to more good starts than previous opening pairs for India in England. Rahul Dravid may not have had the most productive of tours in terms of runs, but his leadership was top-class and field-placings innovative and different for different batsmen.
Tendulkar too wasn’t at his best, but he still got two half centuries in difficult conditions. Ganguly was very fluent along with Laxman, and both added muscle to the middle order. Dhoni, like Karthik, adapted well to the conditions in England, and his match-saving innings at Lord’s showed how matured he has become as a batsman. Zaheer Khan led the Indian bowling with a display of swing and pace not seen since the days of the great Kapil Dev. R.P. Singh complemented him well with a deceptive bouncer to add to his movement off the pitch to give little respite to the batsmen. Sreesanth was off-color for most of the series, but when he got it right, he looked a dangerous bowler. Anil Kumble was as always a threat, and the best moment of the series has to be when he squeezed the ball though the wicketkeeper’s legs to get the boundary for his first Test century. There were smiles all over the ground and not just in the Indian dressing-room when Kumble did that, for he is a popular and much respected and admired player all around the world. Perhaps the batting effort had taken a toll of his energies, for he was just a bit below his usual self in the second innings of the last Test. The debate about the follow-on and declaration will go on and on, at least till the one-day series starts, but it is understandable that the Indians, having won the Notts Test, were not in a charitable mood, and did not want to give England even a hint of a chance. The series win came after 21 years, so it is sweeter, and hopefully it will be the beginning of a turnaround in India’s cricketing fortunes. They have a busy season ahead, and the one way to feel energetic and peppy is to keep on winning, for when that happens, all the mental fatigue and physical tiredness just goes away. India have shown a wonderful ability to rise after a setback, and that attribute is going to be much-needed in the incredibly tight schedule ahead of them.
