As a tumultuous cricketing year comes to a close, it is time to take stock of the progress the game has made in India in the last 12 months. By all assessments, it has been a year to remember for every Indian cricket fan.
To go back a little more than 11 months to new-year?s day in Sydney, the team that practiced at the nets opposite the newly unveiled Richie Benaud statue at the SCG on the eve of the new year Test has little resemblance with the team that stepped out to play against England at Chennai on December 11.
India went into the Sydney Test match with a depleted and a demoralised side. Australia had scripted a memorable victory against us in Melbourne, and that too well inside four days and all the talk which suggested India was the real challenger was fast losing steam.
To add to India?s woes, Zaheer Khan, the man who has improved by miles in the year gone by, was injured on the eve of the Sydney Test and was forced to return to India, leaving a serious dent in India?s already depleted morale. It was up to skipper Anil Kumble to show his real mettle and it was up to the seniors, now too well identified as the Fab Four, to inject new teeth and muscle. And as if to answer the nation?s prayers, all of them stepped up.
With a revelation in Ishant Sharma to boost the new ball attack, the Indian team, within days of losing the controversial Sydney Test was back with a vengeance at the WACA in Perth, considered the most difficult of all international outings for a touring side. Victory at Perth helped set the tone for the next two months.
Against all expectations and all odds, Mahendra Singh Dhoni?s young side upstaged Ponting?s Australians to wrest the 50 over one day international crown, after a long hiatus of 22 years. Indian cricket, within months, had once again captured the nation?s imagination and the disastrous 2007 World Cup in the Caribbean was finally forgotten as a bad dream.
If the team was doing well on the field of play, off the field a revolution of sorts was ushered with the initiation of the IPL. The first edition of the Indian Premier League, played to packed houses for 44 days between April 18 to June 1 was a resounding success by all yardsticks. So much so that there was talk of a withdrawal syndrome among cricket fans once the spectacle was over. In most metros across India, and in cities with large South Asian diasporas, religiously watching IPL had become a norm in April-May 2008.
There?s little doubt that April 18, 2008, will go down in cricket history as the date when cricket changed forever. Even if subsequent editions of the IPL fail to deliver, possible if its economics go haywire under the impact of the global economic meltdown, it has proved beyond doubt that cricket sans ?nationalism? can also be made into a lucrative market proposition in India.
If the IPL was a mega hit blockbuster, the player who emerged as the principal actor with many hits to his credit was Dhoni. If critics considered his T-20 world cup win in South Africa a flash in the pan and his victory down under as being second time lucky, Dhoni?s success against Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka proved beyond doubt that India has found a leader who is here to stay. As aggressive as Saurav Ganguly and as composed as Anil Kumble, Mahendra Dhoni has already won millions of fans across the world. If only he can continue his amazing T-20 and fifty over one day success into the Test arena (chances are he will for he has a all win record in the three matches he has captained so far), Dhoni will soon step up to being a contender in the list of India?s all time great captains.
As the year drew to a close, Indian performances turned sharper. Destroying Australia 2-0 with clinical precision and wresting back the Gavaskar Border trophy in the process, Indians signaled to the world the end of Australian dominance. The Australian demolition was followed by the tormenting of the English in the one day series as the Indians romped home 5-0.
As this piece gets published the Chennai Test will be nearing conclusion. I can?t help but hope for a yet another good series for India. But overall, as 2008 draws to a close, it is a happy feeling to note that Indian cricket is on a real high, perhaps at his highest ever, with India ready to wear the No 1 cricket nation?s crown.
The writer is a cricket historian