We are the champions

Whats scenes we witnessed last week at Eden Gardens. Most office system administrators would have complained about heavy load on the network due to constant updates on cricinfo or cricket nirvana. Bhajji sealed the win , with last wicket in the penultimate over. Most of us had given up looking at comfort level Amla and Morkel had during the innings. But in cricket all that you need one deliver for a batsman to get out. Thats the beauty of the game. Ofcourse, the match situation and the bowler/captain 's previous strategies to set up a wicket do count. Such things make test cricket special than say ODI or T20 where all it matters is to hit boundaries. Ofcourse thats also an excitement but these scenes of great defense or holding up an end for 8 hrs like what Amla did is also fun for cricket lovers like me. How many of us would prefer a pizza or a burger over tasty but simple home food like dal roti or pithale bhakri. Once in a while for change maybe we can opt junk food. Test cricket is also enjoyable. For that matter every version has a room, be it ODI or T20 or test. What we need is a balance. People in US get crazy over the fact that a game can go on for 5 days and yet there can be no result. In commercial world, it makes no sense. Also its a national wastage of time resource. But still we love test cricket. We have generations growing over. I dont want to argue merit of other sports over cricket. Fact is cricket has caught our imagination and so be it. There is no harm to be ashamed. Does a US fan is ashamed of the fact that their domestic teams play world series for a sport which is only played in US?
And its special when we know that India will win test no 1 prize this year , after 7 years of Australian dominance since its inception. We flash back to the days of 80s and 90s. 80s more difficult as you had dominant teams like WI, Pakistan decimating us in India as well as abroad.
Even moderate teams like England or Australia used to compete hard in India and mostly defeated us abroad. We had some great players in Gavaskar, Kapil, vengsarkar and some fighters like mohinder, madanlal, kirmani. But we were at bottom of heirrarchy ahead of newborns srilanka and kiwis.
In came 90s with decline of WI and rise of Australia under AB. We were completely sold on to ODIs with advent of satelite TV and liberalization with sachin as national Icon. Our past successes under kapil, gavaskar in 83 and 85 really started this phenomenon. But we invented a formula in Home test to have tailor made tracks where even rajesh chauhan or a raju could have won us game singelhandedly. It was fortune to have world class operator like Kumble to make a kill. But when it came to overseas tour, 19 for 4 , or at best 50 for 2 , were the normal scorelines. The opening pairs were innumerable. then we used to witness master class from sachin in a losing cause. Some times a aggressive knock from azhar or kapil or VVS. All this happened till our horror show in Aus at the turn of millenium. Nadir was the lost home series against proteas, (famous later for other reasons outside than those in the stadiums).
Ganguly is the man who changed the things. We anticipated this dawn with sachin was made captain. But that did not work out. Some things never work out in life as we expect. He also never had team which had true experienced world class talent or clean motives if they had everything else. Ganguly, Kumble, VVS and Dravid were part of that team as well. But they were young , unproven and even their places were not granted.
With advent of Ganguly, we started winning overseas. We had batsmen who could face music of fast bowlers or swing bowling. We had good pacemen who could take wickets and spinners who could be effective even overseas . ganguly had an eye for talent and guts to back them. Thus we had talent of sehwag, yuvraj, bhajji, zaheer, dhoni (also not to forget irfan, balaji, nehra, parthiv) nurtured and matured. Its this core now one of the important cog in No1 test team today, in addition to the master class of Tendulkar, VVS, Dravid as well kumble and ganguly himself). This master class had work ethics, attitude, resolve, which rubbed off onto juniors and took Indian cricket out of fixing chaos, home paper tiger status, poor traveller baggage. But only thing this batch has to achieve is an ICC event trophy ( only one shared champions trophy to show). T20 world cup winning team did not have any respresentation from this class. The last standing survivor of this batch has last chance in 2011. And i think that will be a great tribute, swannsong and most romantic vision for all cricket lovers. Not only to SRT but also to all five. But in life we have seen that we can only hope.. I pray for that. Another person who owes tribute is John Wright who back Ganguly and his proteges. And also to board and selectors for backing Ganguly the prince of Calcutta (ofcourse they had some ulterior motive then under King of Calcutta)
Then we had a debacle in form of Chappell Dravid era. Players were taken out of comfort zones. Ofcourse on test arena it did not hamper much apart from defeat in pakistan, home series leveling against england and pakistan. Also then injuries started creeping up for Tendulkar. Sehwag who later emerged under Kumble after sydney test regaining his greatness was eclipsed in this period. Irfan faded, Zaheer has injury and fitness issue. Bhajji, was taken out of equation.
Worst suffered loss was in World cup 07. But few credits also must be given to Dravid for his conduct in chappel and post chappel era of his resignation, work ethics never changed. We had success for first time in south africa though we lost next two tests. We had win in WI. We best Srilanka at home. Post chappel we won in England.
In came Dhoni with T20 success, but it was resolve of Kumble who was overlooked all the while for captaincy which came handy amidst crisis in Australia. I think we could have much better results had he been given longer stint. Famous sydney test started another chapter of decline of australia coupled by retirements. We beat them at Perth. We then had few setbacks with SA leveling us at home and complete surrender to magic of murali and medis in Srilanka. But even then we had a Galle test and kanpur to fall back upon. Post IPL, we beat Aus at home, england at home, srilanka at home and NZ in NZ and Bangladesh in Bangladesh. Its been a steady rise along with decline of Australia, rise of South africa who beat australia in australia. So it resulted in a pack of Australia, India and SA at top with England just behind. Englands story was strange. They focussed only on ashes and inspite of having potential to be no 1 in mid naughties, they withered away. Also injuries to Freddie, jones, harminson and Vaughan never helped. Now they are rebuilding under strauss along with some south african talent. Pakistan withered away from a good team to average but unpredicatable. Srilanka has given rise to some great talent but their record overseas is not allowing to break in top 3. They cannot boast of even an occassional win in SA/Aus/India.
For india, we agree that we are not the best team now. We are yet to reach that level. We might be on top of rankings for now. But till we win series in SA and Australia there will be a debate.
Also future is difficult as we got small glimpse in nagpur where SA attacked new comers who replaces VVS and Dravid. Else we will fall like Australia did after retirement of Warne, Gilchrist and Mcgrath. We need a bowling allrounder badly. Someone at the level of kapil, flintoff, Pollock. That is the key as we cannot continue hoping to get 20 wickets with 4 bowlers, 6 batsmen and keeper. In case one bowler is off-color or injured then we are bound to lose. In india we can still manage as we have likes of sehwag and yuraj to turn arm over. But if we need to win in SA and Australia we need Irfan pathan badly to deliver. He seems to be only one in horizon as abhishek nayar and praveen kumar have to prove yet in bowling and batting respectively. Our opening pair in batting is fabulous. We need injury free zaheer and a steady partner at other end. Ishant and shreeshant have been erratic but in SA and Australia they have proven to be effective.
And we need few great debuts who will fill in great shoes of Dravid , SRT and VVS who will retire for sure in next 2-3 seasons for sure. We need Ganguly as selector to spot this talent..