Dropping the ball

A marvellous cast of characters that took Indian cricket to glory is dismantling it. The way white ball captaincy was taken away from Virat Kohli drags it back by half a century

Indian cricket and controversy have been inseparable. Just that most controversies, historically, were about defeat and humiliation. Until 14 March, 2001 when V V S Laxman and Rahul Dravid in Sourav Ganguly’s team batted all day to build the platform for a miraculous last-hour win over Australia. With that began a two-decade epoch of Indian dominance, especially in Test cricket. India’s rise has been so breathless since that it comfortably, if not contemptuously, swept aside the ugly Greg Chappell phase as well.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni showed up in the middle, but in the course of time Virat Kohli emerged as the