Spotlight

India nudges South Africa and Australia

While South Africa has dented world beaters Australia’s Test and ODI image, Indian cricket has snowballed into a new curve in becoming Asia’s super power in the game breathing down the two world beaters South Africa and Australia for number one supremacy. Already, Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s team has edged out world champions and long time kings of one-day cricket Australia into third slot in claiming the No.2 ODI ranking next to South Africa while their Test standing is among the top bracket of world cricket at No. 3 next to South Africa and Australia.

Sehwag takes batting to a new curve.

Evidently, with Australia losing its superior clout of over a decade at the hands of Greame Smith South Africans with series losses at both Test and ODI level in the wake of a Test series defeat to India away, the world cricketing hemisphere sees a new dominance with the emergence of South Africa and India in a race to dominate the game. While the South Africans, who have been dogged for years since its pre-apartheid dominance of the game nearly five decades ago with a lost world cup dream from the jaws of victory in 1999, have apparently shed a long hoodoo cast on their cricket by Australia and a stigma of match fixing under disgraced former captain Hansie Cronje, thanks to a new creation under Greame Smith in the last five to six years, Indian cricket gainining new muscle from a limping image some two years ago must be attributed to a miracle captain in the debonair young Dhoni and their embracing Twenty20 cricket from which they have apparently derived much clout.

Indeed, to capture the meteoric rise of these two countries, one a nation from the African continent and the other further from the West to the sub-continent’s cricket crazy India where the game is almost religion to its inhabitants must tantalisingly paint the cricketing hemisphere. India shed a 2007 world cup misadventure that was horrendously marked with a licking at the hands of minnows Bangladesh that followed the sacking of its Australian born coach Greg Chappell, for a short time believing in its local coaching expertise before the arrival of former South African cricketer Gary Kirsten has transformed from all that into winning ways. First a 2-1 Test series triumph over Australia down under skippered by Anil Kumble, the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup, beating Pakistan in two ODI series’, a historic 2-1 Test series eclipse of Australia at home, a humiliation of England (5-nil in ODIs) and 1-0 Test series at home before a 4-1 ODI trouncing for a historic away triumph over Sri Lanka in 25 years crowned by a one-off Twenty20 win over the Lankans.

That the Indian batting machinery has vastly derived muscle from one season of Twenty 20 cricket in the form of the Indian Premier League not so long ago that has seen batsmen like Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag inject a new type of ballooning into their strokeplay is significant for world cricket; a factor that evidently looks like raising their cricket to another level that could see Dhoni and company claim the No.1 spot in both forms of the game. In this context their bowling department too has fast developed with the likes of Irfan Pathan, Zaheer Khan and Praveen Kumar mastering the finer points in fast bowling. Add off spinning wizard Harbhajan Singh into the fold and it is a potential bowling force.

South African cricket traversed in a new voyage that basked in a historic series win that saw Australia lose a home series after 16 years since losing to the West Indies. Under the coaching tutelage of Micky Arthur South Africa had recaptured their magic formula akin to the early days of under Bob Woolmer, thanks to the fantastic batting feats of their captain Smith, A.B. de Villiers, Neil Mckenzie and new boy John Paul Duminy whose match winning 166 in the second Test against Australia underwrote a new arrival in the South African batting ranks after a long time. Elegant and graceful with a silky cover drive and square cut Duminy apparently is their new star along with de Villiers set to take South African batting to new heights.

As it is, South Africa and India have marked a new chapter in world cricket at the expense of Australia which has markedly seen a golden era that started with Mark Taylor and then Steve Waugh before Ricky Ponting disintegrate with the retirement of such greats like Shane Warne, Glen McGrath and Adam Gilchrist.