MUMBAI: Arguably, the most stupendous Test series triumph over Australia has naturally led to a show of uncontrolled euphoria within the Indian team and all round the country.
Two cricketing greats, Sourav Ganguly and Anil Kumble, could not have asked for a more fitting farewell than the one they received at Nagpur’s spanking new stadium.
In turn, a reflective lesson for Ricky Ponting, in the wake of this humiliation, was that this Indian team could be browbeaten by repeatedly resurrecting “monkeygate.”
For heaven’s sake, that issue, of a racial spat between Harbhajan Singh and Andrew Symonds has long been dead and buried. Instead, the Australian captain ought to have raised his team’s game against a superior Indian side. He has to now prepare himself to face the music of his own administration.
The Aussies tried everything, play wise and off-cricket, touching new heights of sledging that cost India the services of their leading run-getter in Gautam Gambhir for the final Test.
It, however, did not make any difference to India’s opening gambit. The outcome of the series and the manner in which Ponting’s men were overpowered must surely lead to a question being asked whether this is the beginning of the end of the era of Australian domination of world cricket?
The Aussies have now been beaten by India in all three formats of international cricket in succession, starting with the Twenty20 World Cup and then the ODI series in their own backyard. The current Test series win has come as a sweet revenge for the controversy-riddled last series Down Under.
Without sounding disrespectful to Anil Kumble, who was eventually forced to call it a day due to one injury following another, it must be mentioned that Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s captaincy made all the difference after being hard put to it to draw the first Test at Bangalore.
In both the Tests that Dhoni took over the captaincy, he displayed remarkable qualities of leadership and brought into play rare tactics in his quietly efficient manner.
Dhoni was also seen bringing old-world values back to the game by the grace with which he first asked Sourav Ganguly to carry out the duties of a captain in the dying moments of the match and then inviting Anil Kumble to jointly receive the Border-Gavaskar trophy and carrying all by himself to the waiting team members.
Coming back to the earlier question, yes, it is the beginning of the end of the long-held Australian domination, but more importantly, one is now witness to the rise of Indian cricket to the top of the new order.
