Triumph is but a stepping stone for challenges ahead

But what good came of it at last?
Quoth little Peterkin,
Why that I cannot tell said he,
But it was a famous victory.

-- Robert Southey

Yes, it was a famous victory. The 2-1 Test series win for India that is, not the 3-2 one-day series win for Australia. The victory at Goa on Friday will be of scant comfort to Steve Waugh and his men who staked their entire reputation on breaking a 31-year-old win drought in India. As an anticlimax, the one-dayers could not have been a bigger letdown; a fourth Test match would have been more purposeful and intriguing.

The visitors' seven week tour was a defining event in India's long journey as a cricketing nation. By humbling the mighty Aussies, who landed in India on a 15-Test winning streak, and in such forbidding circumstances, the Indian players conjured up an inalienable sense of self-belief they lacked for so long. By digging deep into hidden reserves of grit and gumption that none believed existed, they lifted the spirits of an entire nation. A nation needs heroes to boost its own self-esteem and that is where they filled the vacuum; suddenly all else was put aside, even the rumblings in the government and stock market.

For skipper Saurav Ganguly, the result was a personal triumph that overcame the disappointment of a wretched run with the bat. The aggressive tone he lent to his pursuit of victory both in off field sallies and on field bluster served to fire up a team long accustomed to copping a verbal barrage in stoic fashion. Ganguly got under the skin of the visitors even before they landed by professing to be unimpressed with their sequence of victories.

The Aussies targeted him with a vengeance and succeeded in upsetting his composure but if his knock at Goa is an indication, he is coming to terms with the experience. Tactically, if not temperamentally, he is maturing with experience; if only he can learn to keep his irascibility under check, Ganguly might go the distance as captain. Despite Ganguly's shenanigans over the toss, the relationship between the two teams was good as was evident from the mutual applause for individual landmarks on either side.

India's turnaround was inspired by two men extending their own selfimposed limitations to an extent unimaginable on the fourth day in Kolkata. With the team utterly demoralised, it took a lot of mental toughness for VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid to lift themselves in such a situation and inspire the rest of the team. It would have been easy for them to be satisfied by a 50 or even a 100 in a lost cause but Laxman and Dravid just raised the bar higher and higher. While the pair saved the game for India, the man who actually won it was Harbhajan Singh. In eight Tests prior to this series, Harbhajan had not remotely suggested visions of the demon bowler he has now become. Refusing to be unhinged by the caning handed out by Adam Gilchrist and Matthew Hayden in Mumbai, Harbhajan stuck to a riveting line and length and the Aussies struggled to pick his ball that went over with the arm. Playing forward hopefully in defence, Harbhajan's bounce defeated most and kept two short legs in brisk business as all the gremlins associated with the Aussie weakness against off spin came tumbling out of the closet.

John Wright kept a low profile but his contribution as coach, beginning with the arduous preparatory camp was significant. The retiring New Zealander's emphasis on work ethic, discipline, and teamwork, as well as his constant clamour to go back to the basics, was the glue that knit the team together and kept them focused.

Looking ahead, the result cannot brush aside genuine concerns under the carpet. In four out of six Test innings the Indian batting proved too frail against pace bowling, and this on domestic wickets. The opening pair still remains on trial despite six Tests in a row and while they are likely to stay on for want of a suitable alternative, they will have to start delivering pretty soon. The wicket keeper's spot is also unsettled, four keepers being used in the last six Tests. And the bowling is a worry for apart from Harbhajan, the rest were a washout.

Most culpable were the support spinners to Harbhajan, none of whom exerted sufficient pressure from the other end to complement him; it was left to Sachin Tendulkar to step in and perform that role. The general idea seems to be that once Kumble is back, India will have two match winners and all will be well but one must also heed the danger signs of an embarrassingly inadequate bench strength. Next up however is a tour against Zimbabwe beginning in the last week of May where speed rather than spin could be the telling factor. India's dismal overseas record includes a Test loss in Harare in 1998 and opportunity beckons to set that straight. To borrow from Churchill, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning."