Indian Cricket 2008: A Year In Review

By Niyantha Shekar 5 January 2009 362 views One Comment

The year ended with a victorious Indian team holding aloft the RBS cup. They’ve already been christened the number one Test Team by former England coach, David Lloyd and former India stumper, Farokh Engineer, is not the only person to believe that Indian Captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, can do no wrong. The blue eyed boy of Indian Cricket has won 4 out of the 5 tests he’s captained. Who knows, if the fog had lifted earlier at Mohali, and if he had shown that any chance of victory was greater than personal milestones, then that record could have been without blemish.

There was plenty to cheer about this year for India. Virender Sehwag showed us, with frenetic knocks, that Test Cricket could use a bit more urgency. His batting feats included an outrageous 319 off 304 balls against South Africa and an 83 against England that got him the Man of the Match award ahead of Andrew Strauss, who could only doff his hat to Sehwag after scoring centuries in both innings. Sehwag’s opening partner, Gautam Gambhir, finally cemented his place in both the ODI and Test setup with the kind of consistency you would expect from a Rahul Dravid. Ishant Sharma bowled the best spell of the year as Ricky Ponting searched for a life-line and Zaheer Khan showed that a ball without shine is not going to stop him from incrementing that wickets column.

We were tremendous in the one-day circuit this year with 19 victories in 27 completed games. A lot of our success on that front can be owed to Yuvraj Singh, whose punches and nudges were enough to knock the leather off the ball, and whose crisp drives and pulls reminded you of that left handed genius from Trinidad. He may have also put to rest concerns of his caliber at the Test level by winning a Test match with none other than Sachin Tendulkar, but we’ll wait and see.

I don’t blame you if the misery we suffered at the hands of two Sri Lankan off-spinners who seemed to control the ball with their minds seems like a distant memory. Cricket is a sport that we fervent followers look to for instant gratification - it can be five days long at times, but even a great session’s play will make us feel like we are the number one team in the world. The fact that we are a fickle kind also meant that we questioned the very same gentlemen whose names we shouted hoarse in the past. Sourav Ganguly, quite fittingly, retired on a high with his best Test series against the opposition that gave him the most heart-ache, and Anil Kumble showed that if a broken jaw wasn’t going to stop him, then damn a broken hand, as he too bid goodbye to us.

It was a year when we saw Indian Cricket make quite a few Cricketers forget about saving for their retirement with the hugely successful Indian Premier League; a year when every Indian mother’s favorite son, Sachin Tendulkar, played his most significant Test innings at the cauldron at Chepauk, and gave us unbridled joy at a time when we needed it most; a year when Indian Cricket found a leader who is inexplicably honest and for unknown reasons, views this as just a game.

The future is bright.

Photo Courtesy: ali_pk, sandeep, senthil prabhu, pradeep gururani