For men who follow a sport passionately, one of the hardest things to stomach is their team packing it in without a fight. The fact that its just a game sinks in after some time but initial feeling is one of pain and despair, very nicely captured by both Samir Chopra and Sriram Dayanand in their most recent blogs on this topic. The morning of August 13th at Edgbaston is comfortably the worst time I have ever spent watching a Test match live at the ground and probably will be for the rest of my life. Losing to a better team carries no shame but the crippling manner of defeat is what will sting for a long time. The only thing that this team has achieved in this series is to prove to fans that just when you think things can't get worse, they will. That and the fact that the future of this team (post Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman, Zaheer, and Harbhajan) is a scary one, at least in this form of the game.
Its interesting how the team has come full circle from one World Cup to another. The 2007 campaign was probably India's most disastrous one since the 70s and the tour of England which followed soon after was what really kickstarted a run of great results over the last four years. No one would call them the dominant force of world cricket in the way that the Aussies and the Windies were in the decades prior but across formats in the last half of the 2000s India were clearly the best team in the world culminating in the World cup victory in 2011. The surprising aspect for me was how the team managed to perform so well (in all conditions) in Test matches with a bowling attack that was definitely not world-beating. A look at the numbers from matches won shows how dependent the attack was on Zaheer and Harbhajan (and Ishant to an extent) and this is where India have hurt the most in this series, even more than the batting failures. To maintain a winning rhythm teams need to ride on all round contributions and that's where bench strength (especially in bowling) plays such a crucial role. At the moment the bowling and batting cupboard looks fairly bare for India and all indications are for an arduous two years ahead starting with the "save-your-pride" game (or last chance saloon as Sharda Ugra puts it) at the Oval. Its a long road back to #1.
England on the other hand are #1 now and have (especially in recent times) shown the ability and desire to dominate opponents and on cumulative results in the last two years or so, no one can dispute that they have been the best team in the world by a distance. Granted they have yet to win in the subcontinent (other than in Bangladesh) and have beaten South Africa in South Africa only once in the last 20 years but their all round batting line-up and strength in depth in bowling means that those milestones are likely to be hit in the next year or two. For me the two most impressive figures in England's rise have been Jimmy Anderson and Ian Bell. The two of them are great examples of highly talented cricketers who started off their international careers with suspect temperaments but have in the last two years shown great maturity and strength of mind and are at the top of their games now. That they haven't gone down the path that so many England players have in the past (Hick, Ramprakash, Lewis, Headley all come to mind) is testament to Strauss and Flower's management. Alastair Cook has been no less a contributor and the future leadership for England looks secure in his hands. Following their progress now that they have achieved their goal is going to be interesting.
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