For the second time in successive Test matches,India reached their victory target with an M S Dhoni boundary. On Sunday,after he clouted Nathan Lyon past the midwicket ropes,the India skipper had plenty of reason for a rare display of emotion. The winning hit had sealed a 4-0 series whitewash,an unprecedented feat for India. Australia hadnt been on the wrong end of such a scoreline since their tour of South Africa in 1969-70. Dhonis side,however,were far from unaccustomed to such reverses,having experienced it twice,on their last two overseas tours. Now,they had turned things around,with a youthful team that had no room for some of its biggest names of the recent past. Having watched the ball crash into the advertising hoardings,Dhoni didnt raise his arms or roar in elation. He stood still for a couple of seconds,turned around,and walked slowly back to his crease to take possession of a stump. From the non-strikers end,Cheteshwar Pujara strode up the pitch in a similarly unhurried manner. Even a pair of flawless half-centuries,scored from an unfamiliar batting position on a perilous wicket with a broken finger,only brought to his face a shy smile. Dhoni and Pujara,as they met mid-pitch in a muted embrace,possibly had the lowest heart-rates among the mass of humanity that had filled the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium almost to capacity. Where previous victories over Australia had featured dramatic turnarounds and wildly fluctuating emotional graphs,this six-wicket win had been almost too easy. All the turmoil had been restricted to the visitors camp. Dhoni himself had set the tone in Chennai,when he had walked in with the first Test in the balance (India 324/5 replying to Australias 380) and smashed 224 to take the momentum entirely the home sides way. Since that knock,everything had fallen in place for India. By the end of the series,nearly all the gaps that were evident in the side after their defeat to England earlier in the season appeared to have been plugged. Murali Vijay,who had been called to replace Gautam Gambhir despite having a poor season in domestic cricket,ended up as Indias top run-getter in the series. In Mohali,Shikhar Dhawan took Virender Sehwags place with an innings of Sehwagian proportions. Pujara and Virat Kohli enhanced their reputations and Sachin Tendulkar ended the series with his career looking in far better shape than it had been in at its beginning. After a poor series against England,Ravichandran Ashwin re-emerged as the leader of the attack and took 29 wickets,the most by an Indian in a four-Test series. Ravindra Jadeja,who had played only one Test match before this series,gave the side an all-round option they had lacked for many years,taking 24 wickets with his accurate left-arm spin and suggesting,with his cameos in Mohali and Delhi,that he could make a difference with the bat too. In Bhuvneshwar Kumar,India discovered a bowler who was both accurate and capable of swinging the ball both ways. But such uniform,unchallenged success is rare,and is usually the result of an unequal contest. This Australian team came into the series with little previous experience of the sub-continent,and lacked top-class batsmen and spinners. To compound matters further,it was weakened at different times by injuries and self-imposed disciplinary bans. The scoreline possibly revealed more about Australias weaknesses than about Indias strengths. Still,Dhoni and his men have made tangible gains.
