Mumbai: The Indian Test team is going through a purple patch. They are currently playing against England and are leading the series 2-0 with two Tests remaining. The team under the captaincy of a dynamic and an energetic leader Virat Kohli has played exceptionally well and proved their critics wrong on every account.
Since the loss against Sri Lanka in 2015, Team India is unbeaten. Kohli has lost only two matches as skipper out of the 20 he has led India in. The team lost against Australia at Adelaide Oval, 2014-15 and Sri Lanka at Galle, 2015. Kohli and coach Anil Kumble have instilled confidence in the players and it shows. The men in blue defeated Sri Lanka by 2-1 and won a series on the island after 22 years. They comprehensively outplayed the Proteas (3-0 in 2015) and snatched their No.1 ranking and the team also won in West Indies without suffering a single defeat.
Team India has not lost a single Test back home since losing to England at the Eden Gardens, Kolkata, 2012. But can this team win overseas too? It is a million dollar question and looking at India’s record abroad in the recent past, fans may not be ready to put their money on the team. But Kohli’s boys have shown that they can perform well across conditions and opponents. The batting led by Kohli, Murali Vijay, KL Rahul, Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane is strong enough to take on the stiffest of challenges.
Kohli scored four hundreds Down Under and has grown as a batsman. Rahane has scored runs in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and England. He also proved his mettle in Sri Lanka and West Indies. The current players pride themselves in excelling when the chips are down. The main ingredient to win a Test match requires picking up 20 wickets and in that area Indians have fallen short repeatedly. There have been
combinations and still Indians haven’t bowled well as a unit. Ishant Sharma, Mohammad Shami, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Varun Aaron, Barinder Sran and Jasprit Bumrah are the bowlers, who can take India forward and they are all hungry and are relatively young and have fire in their belly to help India win on foreign shores as well.
The No.1 ranked ICC Test bowler Ravichandran Ashwin has already broken many records and going by the current form, he is on Cloud Nine and has performed in adverse conditions too. When stalwarts like Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar endorse that the current team has firepower and skills to win overseas you cannot argue with their logic. India started to win abroad under the leadership of Sourav Ganguly and broke the myth that Indians are tigers at home and lambs abroad.
India has won at Headingly (2002), Adelaide Oval (2003-04), Trent Bridge (2007), Durban (2010-11) and Lord’s (2014). The team has been whitewashed too but the current group is professional and is approaching its peak and is quite young. The team is not carrying any mental baggage and they play to win.
India is No.1 in ICC Test rankings and it is high time that it proves its Numero Uno status by winning abroad too. Kohli and Kumble are seasoned professionals and know that they will be judged by their record in trying and difficult conditions. The team is in shape and it’s just a matter of time before they conquer alien conditions too.