After the red dust settled in the middle and the handshakes, however tightly gripped, went around, the India captain, Virat Kohli, led his team on a lap of honour around the Wankhede Stadium to celebrate what he later described as the sweetest of his five successive series victories in charge.
This satisfaction, Kohli said, came both from the quality of the opposition and the manner in which his side have taken an unassailable 3-0 lead going into the fifth Test in Chennai starting on Friday, coming as it has with three tosses going against him in four Tests. They are the world’s No1 side for a reason and having now equalled India’s longest unbeaten run of 17 Tests, chalked up between September 1985 and March 1987, the captain believes the pieces are coming together for a decade of dominance.
If they remain imperfect, then some key components are more than making up the difference. Kohli’s own bat is flaming at present to the tune of 640 runs this series while in Ravi Ashwin, Ravi Jadeja and Jayant Yadav he boasts three spin-bowling all-rounders who can change a match in either discipline. With the bat this has brought 633 runs between them while with the ball – their day jobs – they have shared 52 wickets already.
Before eyes roll it must be noted that the trio have done so on surfaces that, despite pre-series predictions that featured more references to Bunsen burners than a GCSE chemistry exam, have been both unquestionably subcontinental but also fair. Only in the second Test in Visakhapatnam did the toss, which India won, feel crucial but even then it was variable bounce, not raging turn, that was the key feature.
Pitches are a hot topic in India. After every day’s play cricketers are, without fail, asked for their assessment of 22 yards of baked and rolled soil by a local reporter. In Visakhapatnam one such innocuous query was met with a particularly spiky response from Ashwin, hinting it has been something of a raw nerve for the off-spinner.
“Honestly one day I would like to walk into a press conference and stop answering questions on the pitch because that’s as good an Indian pitch as one can get,” Ashwin bristled, when simply asked for his reading of it. “I don’t know why these jibes come back at us. Honestly it looks like a jibe. You guys watch the game through the day and the pitch is something you can definitely assess better than we do.”
Such touchiness stemmed back to the 2015 series against South Africa when only once in four Tests did a team post a total of more than 300 as India went on to win 3-0 (four days of rain in Bangalore saw the second Test drawn). These prepared rank turners – including one in Nagpur where no batsman passed 50 - meant Ashwin and his partner in crime, Jadeja, cashed in with 31 and 23 wickets respectively, with averages of 11 and 10, as the touring batsmen found themselves groping like drunks for the light switch. In short, it was not the most gratifying of home victories.
While it helped ease Kohli in during his first year as captain, the ploy led to criticism from the home media and in the lead‑up to the current 13-Test home season, it prompted former internationals such as Sourav Ganguly and Harbhajan Singh to warn against a repeat. The latter feared the policy might “boomerang” against India as in the World Twenty20 in March when New Zealand bowled them out for 79 in the group stage on a low-scoring minefield in Nagpur (again).
However Anil Kumble, India’s head coach, has overseen a rethink in this department since being appointed in July and while England’s batsmen have come up short against the turning ball at crucial times during this series, they can have few complaints about unfair assistance. Ashwin and Jadeja, ably supported by Yadav, have simply shown their class through a relentless accuracy that has evaded their touring equivalents, sending down 109 maidens (including Amit Mishra’s three) to their 43. Jadeja, who keeps pinning Alastair Cook lbw, has bowled 53 of them.
Ashwin is the main man, however, and lived up to his status as the world’s No1 bowler – a tag that some previously doubted he deserved. His cocktail‑shaking brand of twiddlers must be recognised for its mastery since he has 27 wickets from four Tests and now has more five-wicket hauls than Kapil Dev (23), with just Harbhajan (25) and Kumble (35) ahead of him. On the final day in Mumbai, his bamboozlement of Jonny Bairstow with the carom ball was worthy of any superlatives that used to greet Shane Warne’s best deliveries.
The challenge now for India, if Kohli’s prediction is to come true, is to take their form out of the subcontinent. A glance at the future tour programme, however, shows this will not come until early 2018 when they tour South Africa. It means they look primed to continue their dominance but, at home, this now means doing things the right way.
