The contrast couldn?t have been sharper. India went into the Test series with just one preparatory game at Taunton against Somerset. The result: a complete rout. The pressure kept mounting after the first couple of defeats and after Lord?s and Trentbridge a reversal in fortunes was impossible.
India will now go into the five-match, one-day series with three practice matches behind them, allowing India?s one day specialists to get used to the conditions. There is little doubt that India, the world champions in the 50-over format, will fare much better in the next few weeks.
This once again brings into focus the debate over the world?s number one team. Number one, as I have repeatedly written, is about domination, domination both at home and overseas. It is about consistency and the ability to adapt to varying playing conditions and beating the best of the best with regularity. England?s real test will come when they tour the sub-continent and also when the South Africans tour England next summer, for, unlike India, the Proteas continue to take their Test cricket seriously and will be more than well prepared for Strauss and company.
Winning in the subcontinent in hostile conditions is crucial to credible claims to pole position in world cricket. The ability to bat on spin-friendly tracks and bowling in the heat and humidity of India will be the big test for Strauss? bowlers and till such time as they have accomplished that, the verdict on their domination must wait.
By this yardstick there have only been two uncontested number one teams in Test cricket?Clive Lloyd?s West Indies of the 1980s and then Ricky Ponting?s Australians at the turn of the millennium. Lloyd?s team thrashed India in India 5-0 after India had won the 1983 Prudential Cup beating the West Indies; and the Australians won the 2004-5 series in India 2-1 after the Indians had drawn the series down under one apiece in December January 2003-4. Interestingly, however, Ponting has never won a Test match in India as captain. With Ponting out, injured, Adam Gilchrist skippered the team to a series win conquering what Steve Waugh had labelled as Australia?s final frontier.
Even in the one-day arena India might be the world champions but whether or not they are the undisputed number one team is debatable. India has never won a one-day series in South Africa and had lost the series to England 3-4 when India last toured in 2007. Only in Australia did India win a one-day tournament in 2008 after a gap of 22 years. This demonstrates the fluidity at the top of international cricket with any of the top four sides capable of winning on their day.
The key then is to be competitive. England will surely start the one-day series this week as favourites carrying all the momentum into the contest after their massive Test series win. The bowlers are all in form and in fielding the English are a notch above the Indians. If the Indians are able to perform to potential, the series is expected to go down to the wire making it a contest to savour. And that?s what an Indian fan is waiting for. Losing to the English in English conditions isn?t a disgrace. What is humiliating is the manner of defeat, abject capitulation that has left Indian fans in Britain completely deflated.
With Andy Flower already having made known his next ambition, which is winning the 50-over World Cup in 2015, it is expected that the English will come hard on the Indians. And this is indeed their best opportunity with the Indians still reeling under the spell of the whitewash.
What will further help Cook and team is that the burden of expectations isn?t at its peak anymore. The Test series win has already saturated the fans and the one day victory will only be a further icing on the cake. Even if the English lose the series, the summer of 2011 will still go down in history as one of their best, a year when England scaled the pole position in Test cricket and got themselves into reckoning to compete with the best Test teams of all time.
The writer is a sports historian