Test cricket’s most amazing era is waning, as India and Australia both lose their edge.
A few days ago, Umpire’s Post, on his day job of a business journalist, met the CEO of an IT company who was in the US looking for inorganic growth during 1999-2003. He saw the peak and trough of the technology boom. He has amazing stories to tell, because he was there, saw it all, and played a small part in it. There is no knowledge like first-hand knowledge.
If you want to regale your grandchildren with stories of Test cricket’s most amazing era, keep a keen eye on this India-Australia series. It may mark the last high-point of what has been an incredibly good 10 years for Test cricket. That was against the run of play; ODIs were at the peak of their popularity in the 1990s and expected to hit Tests out of the ground.)
This was the period in which Australia nearly eliminated the draw as one of the possible results. They won most of the games, but also changed the way the other countries played, and thought.
This was also the period in which India, though it never quite established itself as the world number two except for a brief period in 2004, proved equal to Australia in at least five Test series. (The only blip was the Lele-forecast 3-0 rout Down Under in 1999.)
But the players who made this contest possible are either gone (the Waughs, Warne, McGrath, Gillespie, Langer, Martyn, Gilchrist, Srinath, Sidhu) or going (Ganguly, certainly, and Dravid and Kumble, possibly). Sachin and Laxman may chug along for a while more, as will Ponting and Clarke. Only Sehwag will last longer, and Harbhajan will run through sides once in a while.
Sadly, neither country has spawned a new generation to replace the outgoing stalwarts. The new contender’s claim is based on youth, which is a far more flimsy rationale than ability or performance. None of Rohit Sharma, Badrinath, Kaif, Yuvraj, Gambhir, Raina and Uthappa have looked Test certainties yet. Certainly not the way Sehwag did on debut and before him Ganguly and Dravid.
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Australia’s batting looks raw and untested, and the bowling too dependent on Brett Lee. Mitchell Johnson has not lived up to the early promise and the spinner duo of Bryce McGain (a 36-year-old leggie with 19 first-class matches to his name) and Jason Krezja (a 25-year-old offie with a bowling average of 45) would not inspire fear even among the India A players.
Chances are that the India-Australia contests of the future will not have the edge and needle of the recent past. With the edge gone out of India-Pakistan rivalry and the Ashes, one wonders what Test cricket will have to feed off.