India Won The 4th Test Match Against England And Reclaimed The Anthony De Mello Trophy

India registered a win in the 4th test match against England at Wankhede with an innings and 36 runs. It took the innovators only 32 minutes to claim the remaining 4 wickets of the British line-up, bowling them out for 195 runs.

After two failed attempts in 2012 and 2014, India has regained the Anthony De Mello Trophy making this the best era of Indian Cricket. India has now won five test series in a row and Virat Kohli is gradually emerging as the best captain that the No.1 Test nation can ask for.

Indian Team has outshined England throughout the series and the hosts have seen new talent coming out from this series.

Jayant Yadav

The man who made his test debut in this series, has emerged as one of the prominent members of the team’s spine. Yadav has done everything from claiming important wickets to scoring a fifty and a century in his debut series.

Many players come and go but the ones who stay, prove their mettle in an instant and that is what Jayant Yadav has done. Yadav has made the team’s spine stronger than ever and soon the dependence on the top three will be a talk of past.

Parthiv Patel

Playing for national team after 8 years is never an easy task for a cricketer but Parthiv Patel has defeated all odds and his performance has been appreciated by everyone.

Scoring 100+ runs in the comeback match and launching himself at the ball behind the wicket like a teenager has shown how desperate the player was to wear the Indian jersey again. What will be his future in the team is still an uncertainty but when we talk about getting registered in the eyes of selectors, he has left no stone unturned to do so.

Murali Vijay

This player has been part of the Indian roster for a long time and evolved as a dependable opener in this series.

Contributing important runs or playing in tensed situations, Vijay has done everything and the recent 137 runs innings in the 4th test match against England is a definitive proof of his capabilities.

Players to talk about

Ravichandran Ashwin

This star spinner has outshined every bowler in the series and the record of claiming 5 wicket hauls 24 times and leveling with the legend Kapil Dev is a triumph in its own sense. Since his debut in the Indian Cricket team, R.Ashwin has evolved to become the most consistent and dependable bowler in recent times.

Virat Kohli has accepted that half of the efforts in India becoming the No.1 team have come through Ravichandran Ashwin and he is the best allrounder of the current era.

Virat Kohli

Words are not enough to acknowledge this star performer. The moment he took on the skipper’s cap, Virat Kohli has changed a lot as a player, all for good reasons. Scoring 3 double hundreds in a calendar year and taking his team through 17 consecutive matches test matches without a defeat has taken Virat Kohli to the top two of the most successful test captain of Indian Team. MS Dhoni took the team to 11 such matches while Sunil Gavaskar tops the list with 18 test matches.

Virat Kohli scored 235 runs in the first 2nd innings of the 4th test while the whole England batting lineup managed to score 195 runs. This shows how good of a cricketer Kohli is. Since he took on the captaincy, he has evolved as a good fielder, a calm leader and a perfect opportunist. With a long career in front of him, the player is destined for becoming the most celebrated player of the game.

With another encounter left in the series, several records have already been broken and here are some of the stats that took the No.1 test team to another level.

1. Teams losing by an innings after scoring 400+ in the 1st innings:
Eng v Ind, Mumbai, 2016* (India won by an innings and 36 runs)
SL v Eng, Cardiff, 2011 (England won by innings and 14 runs)
Eng v Aus, Oval, 1930 (Australia won by an innings and 39 runs)

2. India has now won 8 tests out of the 11 played in 2016 and the same feat was achieved in the year 2010 when the team won 8 out of the 14 tests played under the captaincy of MS Dhoni.

3. Ravichandran Ashwin becomes the second most 12 wicket taking bowlers in test cricket with five such hauls on his name. M. Muralidharan tops the list with six 12-wicket hauls in test cricket.

4. India has now won 24 tests against England and Australia each, the most against any opposition.

All the above stats displays that the Indian team has seen a drastic evolution in the recent years and the ones who couldn’t make it to any of the above lists are also an integral part of the No.1 Test team of the world.

Gone are the days when batting was the only department where Indian team shined as the current team is one of the best that India has ever seen and the comparison between former legends and current knights are doing the rounds of Cricket Fraternity, Kapil Dev vs R. Ashwin being the most talked about one.

We should understand that time has changed and what the ‘Legends’ have achieved in the past should not be compared with the current players and records are always meant to be broken.

Coming to the present, India and England will play the fifth and final test of the series in Chennai on 16th December and the hosts will try to whitewash the inventors, taking their game to the next level.

12 December 2016
Rohan Jaitly