A Poster For IND's Year

India are the best team in the world currently. They’re one of the greatest Test teams of all time, from one to eleven. If there was ever a poster to commemorate this era, it would be this picture.

Pat Cummins is one of the greatest fast bowlers of all time. Washington Sundar is India’s 5th choice spin bowling all rounder. Cummins is in his prime. He’s quick, accurate, hostile and relentless. His Test record is matched by only a few fast bowlers in Test history.

That the ball went for six was a fluke of timing rather than a triumph of method. Washington Sundar had exactly one thing going for him - that he met the ball in the perfect moment. He was off balance, he hadn’t moved back and across as the batter is supposed to do. If his bat had got there one hundredth of a second later, the ball would have taken his glove. And because he was off balance, he had no real means of pulling out of the shot. He was committed, and it came off, even though Cummins had basically beaten him.

This run chase against arguably the greatest Australian attack in the modern era, in which the substantial scores came from Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant, and Cheteshwar Pujara, was possible because of the quality and depth which IND have built over the past five or six years.

I would buy a poster of this shot because it represents both IND’s quality at the end of the 2nd decade of the 21st century, and also, of the precarity of rare events like a 330 chase in the 4th innings. So many things have to go right, and this has to be accompanied by significant quality and depth. This does not come together by accident, or as a matter of routine.

I grew up watching IND sides of the Azharuddin and Ganguly eras - mid-table sides with two or three great players, for whom every opponent was a significant competitor, whether home or away. This current IND side is beast which would have been unrecognizable to me fifteen or twenty years ago.