It would not be India if someone was not trying to take the gloss off an achievement.
The 3-0 Test series win against New Zealand was only India’s fourth clean sweep in a series of three or more Tests, but much of the talk since has focused on the pitches the matches were played on.
At the post-match news conference in Indore, where Ravichandran Ashwin took remarkable figures of 13 for 140 to end the game inside four days, Virat Kohli tried to downplay the queries that sought to put an asterisk next to the scoreline.
“We believe in our abilities, that we should be good enough to do it on any surface and against any team,” he said, having led the way with a superbly paced 211, his second double-century of the season.
“That is a step in the right direction. We believe in our skill much more, and don’t focus on creating an atmosphere or conditions which might suit us partially.
“We finished two games in four days on perfectly fine Test cricket pitches. That gives us a lot of confidence.”
It would have irked him no end, however, that most of the questions were prompted by tweets made by a one-time teammate. Harbhajan Singh was once India’s premier off-spinner.
But since Ashwin established himself half a decade ago, Harbhajan has barely played. When they both found places in the same XI, Ashwin was the better bowler by a distance.
After the second day in Indore, Harbhajan tweeted: “pitch already spinning a lot #tailormadeconditionsforspinners don’t think NZ can bat for long.”
But in those allegedly tailormade conditions, New Zealand made a superb start to their reply.
At one stage, they were 134 for one, before Ashwin’s patience and wiles sent them tumbling to 148 for five.
It was the spell of the series and it had little to do with the surface, and everything to do with how cleverly he varied both trajectory and speed.
Harbhajan was not finished though. Before Ashwin’s efforts in Indore, he had tweeted: “Kumble and my test wicket count would have been something else if we got wickets like last 4 years we playing on.”
He conveniently forgot to mention that he had played three Tests himself in that period. In the last two, the gulf between the one-time incumbent and his replacement was vast.
While Ashwin took 12 for 198 against Australia in Chennai (February 2013), Harbhajan had figures of three for 143. In the next Test, Harbhajan’s two for 62 paled next to Ashwin’s six for 104.
Ashwin is part of the generation whose love for the game was enhanced by the thrilling series against Australia in 2001, the one in which Harbhajan took 32 Australia wickets.
“I watched that 2001 series,” Ashwin told this writer recently. “I was still in school then.
“It was a fabulous series. Some of us were exempted from classes, and the entire school was taken to the auditorium to watch the game because of what unfolded in Kolkata.”
For him and others, Harbhajan’s comments are painful to process. When asked about it, he added: “Did he really want to be mean? Or has he just been misunderstood?”
After India won the series, Harbhajan’s congratulatory tweet mentioned only Kohli and Anil Kumble, the coach. Not a word about Ashwin, whose 27 wickets at 17.77 ensured a fourth successive man-of-the-series award.
Fortunately for Ashwin, those that run the show now have no doubts about his quality.
“See, even if it is a turning pitch you have to bowl well,” Kohli said. “Spin doesn’t happen only off the pitch.
“Spin is about how many revs you impart off the shoulder first. And then the ball will do something off the pitch.
“I quite clearly remember after we lost to New Zealand in the World T20, suddenly their spinners were quality and we were found out. I don’t see anyone talking about that now.”
It is just sad that the talk has come from someone who should know better.
Bengaluru FC making Indian football fans sit up
It is the Indian Super League (ISL) that is all over TV screens at the moment in India. But the bigger story features an I-League side that did not even exist four years ago.
Bengaluru FC have won the I-League in two of the last three seasons, with Ashley Westwood pulling the strings from the touchline, and his departure in May has not slowed the momentum around the club.
His last acts as Bengaluru coach were clinching the domestic title, and then inspiring a 3-2 away win over Hong Kong’s Kitchee in the last 16 of the AFC Cup, Asia’s second-tier competition. It marked quite a turnaround after the team had lost their first two fixtures in the group stage, to Lao Toyota FC of Laos and Johor Darul Ta’zim, the defending champions from Malaysia.
Albert Roca, once Frank Rijkaard’s assistant at Barcelona, replaced Westwood. Under him, Bengaluru edged past Singapore’s Tampines Rovers 1-0 over two legs in the quarter-finals.
Tampines had earlier eliminated India’s Mohun Bagan, and Bengaluru’s victory made them only the third India side to reach the last four of the competition, after Dempo (2008) and East Bengal (2013).
Johor, who beat them 3-0 at home and 2-1 away in the group stage, are the semi-final opponents, and Eugeneson Lyngdoh’s equaliser in the 56th minute at the Larkin Stadium in Johor Bahru last month means that Bengaluru go into the home leg of the last four on October 19 with expectations sky high.
Lebanon’s Al-Ahed and Iraq’s Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya are also tied at 1-1 in their semi-final, with the Lebanese at home in the second leg.
Johor are the only East Asian side to have won the competition, and getting past them into the final would represent a quantum leap for Indian football.
After half a century of little more than disappointment though, no one’s taking anything for granted, home leg or not.
One thing is certain though. The West Block Blues, the Bengaluru fans who congregate in that particular stand of the Bangalore Football Stadium, will be in fine voice.
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