Ah! Finally the day
has come. India has won a series overseas after a gap of four years and won a
series in Sri Lanka after 22 years. Here are some of the things that I felt
clicked for India in this recently – concluded series and made them a
formidable team.
The ‘Aggressive’
mentality: India had not won any overseas Test series, and had hardly won
any Test match against any strong team. Morale was down. In the middle of all
this was MS Dhoni. Who was termed as Captain Cool in ODIs was blamed for lack
of decisiveness in the longer format. As a result, he retired from Tests after
the fourth Test in Australia and in came the rock star of the Indian dressing
room, Virat Kohli as captain. And he brought a swagger into the team. He was determined
to play the ‘aggressive’ brand of cricket and promised to bring vigour to an
uninspired team. But whether that will work was not fully tested as the
assignments he got were only of one Test. His first full – fledged assignment
as Test captain was the tour of Sri Lanka. It presented to him an opportunity
to prove his leadership as a captain. And how it worked! Apart from a few minor
glitches, it worked wonders. Ravichandran Ashwin, Ishant Sharma and Amit Mishra
were in top form, and were successful in restricting the runs as well as taking
wickets at regular intervals. Ashwin specially was in top form, picking up the
highest number of wickets, 21 in 3 matches. Ishant Sharma too, was really good
with the ball, constantly bowling bouncers and making optimum use of his
Herculean height. He perhaps went too far with the aggressive attitude and was
charged with a one – match ban for giving a send – off to some of the Sri
Lankan batsmen. Well, something better than nothing.
The five – bowler
theory: Virat Kohli actually implemented the aggressive mentality by
bringing in five specialist bowlers, which worked wonders for the team. Even if
substantially, this did add pressure to the inexperienced batting order and
sometimes did fail. If not for some batsmen who stuck around and drove the
innings, the results could have been entirely different than they are now.
Better fielding:
Now, you can say that this was expected of this young squad. But in this
series, they upped the ante, especially the slip cordon. And in them, Ajinkya
Rahane is a name worth mentioning. He took an astonishing 8 catches in a match,
setting a record. So, as a result, most of the wickets were ‘caught and
bowled’. And the bowlers were indeed happy. In fact, of Ashwin’s tally of 21
wickets, 14 were catches. Of those, 4 were caught by Rahane.
People may debate
that Sri Lanka was a comparatively easy team to beat as it is in a period of
transition. But for all those who say this, India is also in a period of
transition. And there were moments in the series from where even Sri Lanka
could have won, but the Indians fought back on the basis of their merit and
talent and clinched the series after trailing 1-0.
I wish good luck to
the Indian team for the upcoming South Africa series starting from the 2nd
of October, which is at home. This is where the mettle and skill of this
developing team will be tested to the fullest.
