good article to read: The victory is a tribute to the men of the golden era, who showed that winning overseas is an attainable reality Eras are great for nostalgia. Eras can be a benchmark too. The present Indian team is often juxtaposed between these two perspectives. M.S. Dhoni’s current squad is often compared to the fabulous Indian team of the previous decade. The one that had its glory years, thanks to an array of supreme cricketers united through their fierce desire to prove that India is inferior to none, especially overseas. You cannot get players like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, V.V.S. Laxman, Virender Sehwag, Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan operating in tandem again. With that quality, it was inevitable that the previous squads clocked maximum victories across diverse shores. India registered 13 triumphs in foreign lands till 1999. In the next 11 years, India under various skippers — Ganguly, Dravid, Kumble and Dhoni — won 23 Tests at places as far as Port-of-Spain and Adelaide. It’s a statistic that can test the present bunch but there is a finer detail from which it can take heart. The recent historic victory at Lord’s has helped the new core taste success outside the sub-continent much earlier than Tendulkar and company. The Lord’s Test win has happened in Virat Kohli’s 26th Test and the details for the rest are as follows: Murali Vijay (24th Test), Shikhar Dhawan (9), Cheteshwar Pujara (21), Ajinkya Rahane (7), Ravindra Jadeja (10), Stuart Binny (2), Bhuvneshwar Kumar (8) and Mohammed Shami (8). We aren’t looking at Dhoni and Ishant Sharma, as they are bridges between the previous and current eras. To make it doubly sweet for this fresh group, Dhawan, Rahane, Shami and Bhuvneshwar made their debuts last year. Kohli and Vijay were part of the 2011 victory at Kingston but that team still had Dravid and Laxman. As for the old guard, yes, there were wins against Bangladesh at Dhaka (2000) and against Zimbabwe at Bulawayo (2001), but those proud men would surely admit that the opposition lacked quality. But we are talking of a group that had made its Test debuts many years ago. Sample this: Tendulkar in 1989; Kumble, 1990; Ganguly, Dravid and Laxman, 1996; and Harbhajan, 1998. Interestingly, Zaheer made his debut in the successful Dhaka Test (2000) while Sehwag stepped in during 2001. Long drought Tendulkar and Kumble, however, were part of Mohammed Azharuddin’s team that defeated Sri Lanka at Colombo in 1993, which was the lone overseas victory in the 1990s distinguished by India’s winning run at home and marred by recurrent defeats in other nations. The most significant win outside the sub-continent finally came in April 2002 when India snatched a 37-run victory over the West Indies at Port-of-Spain. By then Tendulkar had played 13 years and 92 Tests for India while the Dravid-Ganguly-Laxman trio had batted together for six years. In the same year during August, India carved out a whopping innings and 46-run victory over England at Leeds. And it led to further happy-milestones at Adelaide, Multan, Johannesburg, Nottingham and Perth in the subsequent years. Battle-hardened seniors finally helped India shed its ‘poor-traveller’ tag before the terrible plunge in 2011 that involved four losses each in England and Australia. Dhoni’s young squad may have tasted early success outside the sub-continent, but through its maiden win, an overwhelming tribute has also been paid to the golden era’s men, who showed that victories overseas are an attainable reality. If the current players got there faster than their predecessors, it is also thanks to the self-belief they imbibed from the legends. Just like Steve Waugh retrieved the ball and handed it to Dravid at Adelaide in 2003, a baton has been passed between generations now. It is still one victory, though; but a beginning has been made. Eras are also about continuing the good times and for the present lot, the road towards cricketing posterity has just begun.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 03:35:48 +0000
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