Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Most famous victory

07-Jan-2018: India beats Australia in the Test series down under 2-1 with the fourth test at Sydney washed out. Unprecedented victory by Virat Kohli and his team-mates.

I heard press reports and saw a couple of videos of press interviews of Kohli and Ravi Shastri, the team coach, on the victory and not only they, but also most of the ex-cricketers and commentators mention that this victory is the greatest by any Indian team in history.

While I commend the team and the support staff for this famous victory and for the way the team dominated in all the tests - except for Perth where the Australian bowlers gave back what their batsmen received in the other test matches.

My mind goes back to 1971 - India in West Indies and India in England. Both West Indies and England were superior teams in relative terms than the Indian team then.

My mind goes back to 1983 - Cricket World Cup in England. Australia, West Indies, and England were far superior to the Indian side then.

So which series victory was superior in the history of Indian cricket?

We are the number one test team in the world now - as per ICC rankings. So we are expected to win. India in 1971 and 1983 were nowhere near the pinnacle of test rankings or ODI rankings (though there were no rankings then). India wasn't expected to win those series, but win they did.

So which team performed better? You decide.