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Oval win heralds new era for Indian cricket
An England tour would have been tough for the best of teams, but for a young squad, with many constraints, the difficulty level was a few notches higher.
As this Indian team got ready to embark on a five-Test series in England, the fear was they’d get caught out by the conditions, by Bazball, by their inexperience. They were missing Virat Kohli, R Ashwin and Rohit Sharma, all retired. They had a new captain in Shubman Gill, a struggling coach in Gautam Gambhir and their best bowler, Jasprit Bumrah, was going to play just three matches. An England tour would have been tough for the best of teams, but for a young squad, with such constraints, the difficulty level was a few notches higher. Sometimes, though, a crisis can bring the best in a team. Throughout the series, that is what India discovered, and as an HT analysis pointed out, while the outcome read 2-2 in terms of matches, it was 37-29 in favour of India in terms of sessions. In sports, teams are often judged from a historical perspective — can they repeat Wadekar & Co’s heroics from 1971 or do what Kapil’s devils did in 1986? Are they as good as Ganguly’s boys or Dravid’s series-winning team from 2007? It is a measure of this team’s success that they are now part of that lore.
Captain Gill, who averaged 27.53 on pitches outside India until this tour, made a record pile of runs that suggest that the team can be built around him (at the critical No.4 position). Rishabh Pant enhanced his reputation as a maverick game changer. KL Rahul offered calmness and solidity at the top. Large-hearted Mohammed Siraj revealed skills, stamina and nous to win matches. When called upon, everyone chipped in — Akash Deep, Washington Sundar, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Ravindra Jadeja. There are gaps still, and areas this team will have to work on, but the resilience they have demonstrated shows that England 2025 may mark the beginning of a new era. Even legends have to start somewhere.
