How
appeasing it is to watch India playing in whites, only an Indian cricket fan
can understand and how pleasant it is to watch them winning one can just
imagine.
Experts
will keep saying, it was a home advantage(Who don’t have), Tailormade wickets
(Who don’t make wickets as per the strength of the teams), They were without
Ponting and Hussey (we were without Dravid and Laxman, leave aside out of form
Sehwag, Gambhir, Harbhajan or Injured Zaheer), It was an Inexperienced Aussie
team( Except Sachin, MSD and Ishant all were Inexperienced in our side as well
and it was more or less same team that defeated India four nil) and a bad
wicket to play Test cricket at Delhi(MSD answered them well at Press
conference), but We had witnessed a dramatic change in the way our team played
from 22-Feb to 24-March.
It
was clearly evidenced by Indian players that nobody was throwing away his
wicket after getting a good start and was converting his 30’s to 50’s and then
50’s to 100’s, they were building 100 run partnerships, bowlers were bowling
maiden overs and weren’t giving one or two lose balls in every over. Fielders were
neither giving away free runs nor dropping any catches. They were confident in
their body language and their approach. They were neither too attacking nor too
defensive. More than they were fighting for their place in the squad, they were
enjoying the good time on the ground along with each other. And all that was
clearly missing in the three series we lost (0-4, 0-4, 1-2) and failed to
perform as a team drastically.
After
the masterstroke from the master himself in the first test, we saw Dravid and
Laxman playing in one man, Pujara. We
saw Gavaskar and Srikanth playing in one man, M Vijay. We saw an inning
imitating Bradman, Lara and Sobbers from Shikhar Dhawan. We saw MS Dhoni finally
playing to his potential and matching his ideal Gilly. We saw Kohli maturing
and learning from his every mistake. We saw Jadeja's accurate and consistent
line and length and will wait for him to emerge as one of the best allrounders.
We saw Ashwin rediscovering himself and we saw Bhuvi and Ishant waiting eagerly
for overseas tours. Only thing which still need to be taken care of is succumbing after losing two settled batsmen and non performing potential tail.
Now
where we are glad with our backups in Rahane, Tiwari, Yadav and a total new
crop ready to knock at selectors ‘doors, it would be interesting too to see the
fightback from Gambhir, Sehwag and Harbhajan if they offer any to come back in
national team. After nine months when India will tour SA, we may have lost that
winning combination by that time. We may not have few of players due to bad
form or injury. We may not have that taste of win as fresh as it is now, but hope
our team will not lose these ingredients which are necessary to win the real
test of cricket, which they have found after two whitewash and one home series
defeat and has given crazy Indian fans a wonderful memory to cherish.
