Border Gavaskar trophy

The Border Gavaskar trophy of 2008 will be remembered for reasons many for each one of us. My own diary of the series

• The most unaustralian side I have seen. When do you see an Australian team with not a single bowler who has average less than 30. How often you hear of figures like 0/199 in 30 overs for an Australian bowler even if it was in a practice match.
  
• The most sporting (read uncompetitive) Australian team I have seen in recent times. The only episode of unruly behaviour came from the Indian camp in the form of Gautam Gambhir. Perhaps, rightly they have learnt to lose now.
• It was Indian festival all through. The series ran parallel to the most famous indian festival Diwali came as a blessing in disguise to Indians. Begining from Sachin's record breaking run, we had Anil Kumble's grand farewell and Dada's winning farewell.
  
• War of words was started and also won by India for a change. This is primarily because Australians chose to remain silent this time and Indians ... well we had all of them speaking volumes. Once again the focus was not on war on field but off the field. Indians should have surely avoided it especially the Gambhir incident.
• Post series win Indians have been on a rampage giving one statement over the other and claiming that we are the no.1 side in the world now. Australians attained the no.1 status after tasks like beating Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka and beating NZ in NZ. India is far from doing these. India won a series at home which is nothing but expected because home pitches are tailor made. If Indian attains the same win in Australia then may be we can claim to have moved a notch towards the no.1 spot.One more important factor what I felt was the matches were mostly decided by the spin of the coin and not the spin of the ball. Whoever won the toss dominated the match. Had Australia been luckier than probably we would not have been celebrating this.
• The last day of the series was something to watch out for. The aggression with which Aussies came out to bat especially Hayden and the way Indians matched their aggression, it was test cricket at its best.
  
• No doubt Ponting will have more than a few questions to answer over his game plan of preferring to think about the ban in the next series and letting a winning chance slip away in the final test.
• Australians have learnt to lose in spirit. Indians have just started their winning ways. Hope they handle their win maturely by not giving any horrendous statements.