India End on a Winning Note.

India completed their whitewash of England with a typically comfortable chase. With that we extended to 16 the number of consecutive successful chases. Though our winning streak was broken in Jamshedpur owing to excessive experimentation, this series turned out to be a very satisfactory one.

We continued to make the opponents appear pretty ordinary. While there is some merit in the warning that Indians are having it easy right now (playing at home or close to home against lacklustre opposition), it must be remembered that none of our recent opponents was a weak team.

Sri Lanka and South Africa came as the second best in the world, and Pakistan and England are very competent teams. With the exception of South Africa, we demolished the opponents (Sri Lanka 6-1, Pakistan 4-1, and now England 5-1). By any standards this is a remarkable turnaround for a team which was struggling in the one-days and dropped to 8th place in the official rankings. We moved to third position now.

This is not to imply that everything is alright with the team. We have a long way to go to pose as a serious contender for the world cup, but it is a process and we are making good progress.