DNA Edit: Hall of fame - Virat Kohli’s team will be envied by gods of Indian cricket

Captain Virat Kohli’s team has achieved the near-impossible! India has won a Test series in Australia for the first time — a feat that had eluded previous touring Indian teams for 71 years.

This is an even bigger breakthrough than the World Cup that the country had won twice. The Australian turfs had always offered tremendous challenges for Indians. But it wasn’t that Indian players were second-grade. Yet they always seemed overwhelmed by the pace and seam.

Ironically, even the best batting line-up —  sporting the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Virender Sehwag, Sourav Ganguly — had come a cropper. One could always say that Indian bowlers were scarcely a match but that argument too can be subjected to intense scrutiny.

However, the fact remains that Virat Kohli’s relatively young team had scaled the height that the gods of Indian cricket had failed to climb. This would surely give a huge boost to Test cricket, which has been facing a lot of pressure from the shorter formats of the game.

A series win in Australian soil will also ensure that the next set of Test players are inspired enough to push the envelope. Kohli’s words are particularly poignant: “There is no greater satisfaction than playing Test cricket and winning series like these.” Despite cricket being a team game, this time Indian bowlers had a bigger role to play. Having said that one cannot discount the rock-solid Cheteshwar Pujara. Without him, India would have been that much poorer.

A player who once struggled with the bat overseas but thrashed out three centuries this time. Naysayers will always quibble over facts such as “this wasn’t a competent Australian team”, but that hardly diminishes the glory of Virat’s XI. Indians were over the moon and came back hungrier for more wins.