I started watching cricket in early 90’s, the India tour of Australia in 91/92 to be precise. I have followed the team closely till now, if not watch all the games, at least follow the scores, catch up on what’s written about the game etc. What follows is just my individual perspective of how the team has evolved and why the team from 2017 till date is the best team to have ever represented India. Although I love cricket stats, wouldn’t be discussing that much here, as this is more observational than analysis.
India team in Australia in 91/92 was a disaster. But for an occasional bit of brilliance from Kapil Dev with the ball and Sachin Tendulkar’s stroke play, it was a punch in the gut through and through. The gap between India and Australia was so wide, especially in the bowling, I sympathized with Indian team for their suffering. Javagal Srinath did emerge as a good bowler, but the good news was always few and far between. A win against Pak in WC’92 and a couple of close games against Aus and Eng were the only team performances you could hold onto.
The story was much the same in SA later in ’92. Although SA weren’t as dominant as Aus and Ind did managed to scare them in the last test, failure was Indian team’s faithful companion.
Back in India in 1993 and under the guidance of Ajit Wadekar, India set a template for home dominance with spin that held good for the next decade. A trio of good spin bowlers, pitches that ranged from rank turners to flat wickets that turned a bit and one fast bowler to try and nick off a wicket with the new ball. This formula was a roaring success against Eng in ’93 and continued to be a raging success till end of the decade ( an occasional stone walling by Jimmy ‘padams’ or a Saqlain Mushtaq master class in Chennai were blips)
From ’96, with the emergence of Dravid, Laxman and Ganguly, the batting was better. Javagal Srinath had grown to the leader of the attack and Venkatesh Prasad had a good start to his career. Kumble was picking up a few tricks but the gulf between his home performance and overseas performance was still huge. Overseas tours continued to be a disaster. Indian team essentially had one world class batter, 2 or 3 who were on their way to be world class, one good fast bowler (would have probably been 1st change or 2nd change bowler in other international teams) and rotated through a bunch of fast bowlers who were inconsistent. Their performances reflected this inadequacy. Their will be an occasional session of brilliance (Sachin and Azhar at Cape Town), or one game where we had an upper hand (vs Eng at Lords’96 , vs SA at Wanderers’96), but the general expectation was the team will lose and they obliged. Aus’99 was the true nadir of the team. As a cricket fan, it was horrible to watch the hammering at the hands of Aussies. Sachin’s batting and Laxman’s drool worthy 167 at SCG were the only saving grace from that series.
The return home from Australia was an unmitigated disaster, the match fixing scandal, the hammering at the hands of Nicky Boje of all people was too much to take. The good part was, things probably couldn’t get worse. In spite of the disaster of Australian tour, India had a decent batting core and 2 good bowlers in Srinath and Kumble.
Over the next two decade, the other roles had credible players and there was depth building for all roles. India discovered world class players in Virender Sehwag, Harbhjan Singh and Yuvaraj Singh. Rahul Dravid emerged as a colossal player and VVS hit his golden patch. Sachin continued to maintain is top drawer performance. Kumble improved significantly and became reliable on overseas tours as well. A strong batting core and an attack with 3 good bowlers meant a marked improvement in test match performances in WI’00, Eng’02 , Aus’03 and Pak’04. New players continued to emerged for different roles . Irfan Pathan, MSD, Dhoni were getting into the team showed promise. The team was still inconsistent and the bowling attack was not all weather or didn’t know how to sustain a performance through out the series.
The post ’05 period with Greg vs Ganguly tiff, the captaincy change etc. was covered in a melodramatic manner by the media, but this was a period where the seeds of India’s current strength were laid. There was a genuine attempt to groom a group of fast bowlers, plans to play 5 bowlers and grooming Irfan Pathan as an all rounder were in the works, flexibility in batting roles became the norm. All this worked like magic in ODIs but produced inconsistent results in tests. It had an improving trajectory – from squared test series at home vs Eng and a lost series to Pak to once in a generation series wins in WI and Eng and the first test win in SA. Sreeesanth, RP Singh, Munaf Patel, Irfan Pathan were a good fast bowling pool albeit inconsistent and unfortunately short lived. Zaheer Khan grew into a truly world class, all weather bowler somewhere from 2007.
Despite the WC’07 disaster, the team was improving. The batting continued to be strong, the bowling group was a revolving door with Zaheer, Harbhajan and Kumble at the core. Team maintained a good track record.
From the 90s when losing abroad was the norm to 2010 when they were expected to win at least one test match if not the series abroad was a good growth. I do not ascribe to any captaincy or coaching change, this was just the reflection of the commercial strength of the sport. Post the 90s, BCCI discovered the business potential of TV rights and were good enough to channelize it properly. Investments made in pitch preparation (post 2005), improved infrastructure at state level and cricket being the most popular sport ( and attracting good talent) was the reason for this growth.
The team hit a proverbial iceberg after WC’11. There is no logical reason to explain how so many players simply fell away after the WC triumph. Gambhir, Sehwag, Harbhajan, Zaheer Khan, Sachin, all of them seemed to go completely off. The disaster of Eng tour in ’11 was unexpected. By the time the team reached Aus in 2011, the bowling attack was raw, Zaheer was a shadow of is 2007 version, the batting was in crutches and we were rightly hammered out of sight by Aus. 2011 to 2015 was a return to the 90s, dominance at home vs utter shambles abroad. I guess the 2013-14 overseas cycle was slightly less damaging than the previous overseas cycle
Since 2015, there has been a genuine effort to put a system in place. The coach, captain, the selectors and the NCA have worked in unison to create a good cricketing pool. The players who experienced the lows of 2011 and 2013-14 have become stronger and gotten better. The mistakes in the handling of bowlers like Irfan, Sreesanth and RP Singh have thankfully not been repeated for Ishant, Shami and Bumrah The measure of team’s growth can be understood from the fact that, in spite of two consecutive test series wins in Aus ( last achieved by the WI of late 80s)and the Gabba miracle , there is a lingering sense that this team has under achieved. This despite the continued dominance at home, consecutive series wins in WI and SL. They were genuinely in with a shout to win in SA and Eng’18. Right now they have a world class bowling attack with a world class back up.
The only Achilles heel is seemingly batting in against top quality swing bowling. Fingers crossed that it will be addressed in the current tour of Eng. Regardless of the result of the WTC finals, this Indian test team is the best we have had in the last two decades.
srinify 