Cricketers are an indecisive lot. They can never really make up their minds.

Ask any cricketer worth their salt what the biggest moment of their career is, and they will and say playing/winning in a World Cup. In the same breath, however, they will hasten to add that Test cricket is the purest and the most important format of the sport.

Well, Which Really Is It?

A World Cup experience is the most revered, but Test cricket is most loved?

Now, how do these two add up? They really don’t, and that’s where the problem lies with Indian cricket. For the longest period of time, while our legends sang praises for Test cricket, they knew that we just didn’t have the wherewithal to be numero uno in the format because of a lack of a quality bowling attack.
Then, sometime in the 1990s, with the advent of satellite television and the evolution of cricketers into brands, playing and winning Cricket World Cups became an obsession. This was the generation where a game in colored clothing and a loss in the same would lead to mass hysteria, including a hastily-ended Cricket World Cup semi-final in 1996 at Eden Gardens.

Flawed Legacy

While we achieved moderate success in ODI cricket in the 1990s, the Test record, especially away from home, was in absolute shambles. That’s where the decay set in even as we started assembling the best batting line-up we ever had in our history.

Thankfully, with the turn of the century, wiping out our past foibles became an obsession for a bunch of seniors, especially for captain Sourav Ganguly and his deputy Rahul Dravid. But even as we won an odd Test abroad in the early 2000s, we still faltered against ordinary sides like Zimbabwe (2000-1) and West Indies (2001-02).

Underrated and Understated

It was not until India won under Rahul Dravid in West Indies (2006) and England (2007) that we really made a statement as a Test side. We made rapid strides as a Test side under Dravid, but he never quite gets the credit because we are a nation obsessed with white ball cricket and World Cups.

Obsessed with Colour

The World Cup obsession returned under Mahendra Singh Dhoni and we did manage to win three major limited-overs titles of the ICC under him. In Tests, we did become number one, but it is more a nature of how the ICC rankings work as a summary of your performances for three previous years. India’s successes in Tests under Dhoni included a series triumph in New Zealand (2009), two drawn contests in Sri Lanka (2010) and South Africa (2010-11).

But thereafter, the decline started because India got into the comfort zone, thanks to Dhoni’s six at the Wankhede Stadium which fetched us the World Cup. That six sort of completely pushed Test cricket into the background as our bunch of superstars who shaped the triumph got complacent and took the sport for granted.

What followed were whitewashes in England and Australia in 2011-12. It cost a number of senior cricketers’ careers, but the rot set in and lasted till the time Dhoni was the Test captain in 2014-15.

Return of Passion

Exactly four years ago, Virat Kohli’s passion for the Test match format replaced Dhoni’s apparent dislike. The change is quite visible from being down in the dumps on the ICC Test rankings table, India is now the number one side in the world. The effort in recasting the side is quite visible.

The historic first-ever series win in Australia therefore represents a milestone in Indian Test history. It has come at a time when India in the past could well have been obsessed about getting the World Cup trophy home. But it is down to one man, Kohli, and it has not yet been brought to the forefront.

Kohli is a legacy seeker who is keeping the Test match flame burning in India and the world. Thanks purely to this, we have managed to build a world-class bowling attack coupled with two top-class batsmen. The side is still work in progress and is at least a couple of years from being a complete side. That was clearly reflected in the way we lost in South Africa and England.

But for now, there are plenty of reasons to celebrate the series triumph in Australia. Do not listen to naysayers who point out to the apparent lack of quality in the Australian batting. India did not have a hand in Australia banning Steve Smith and David Warner. The squad up against India on the field was not of Kohli’s choice, they played with the cards dealt in front of them.

Courtesy by:  Daily Hunt