When winning can be a losing proposition

So celebrate, but with these caveats in mind.

First, this was a dead Test. We lost the series; this was a consolation. Statistically speaking, it was Advantage India the moment the Aussies won the Nagpur Test, and with it the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, because they have this habit of taking a foot off the pedal once the series is secured.

They won’t admit it, of course, and they did try their best to win today, but the stats don’t lie: of the six Tests Australia have lost since that India tour in 2001, five have been dead Tests (Adelaide being the exception).

And there’s no point believing that India were robbed in Chennai and if we’d won we’d have squared the series. Or maybe won 3-1. Sport does not have a ‘what-ifs’ or ‘almost’ column; it’s win, draw, loss, in black and white. If we didn’t win in Chennai it’s because we could not bowl out Australia early enough.

Next, the pitch. I’m no expert but I do believe that a Test match is to be played over five days (or four) and anything less means there’s a dodgy pitch. And a Test that ends in two days and 20 minutes is not a contest; it is, as Harsha Bhogle says, a lottery.

This, after all, was a pitch where Michael Clarke, all of four Tests old, picked up 6 for 9 in 6.2 overs. Among them the wickets of Dravid and Kaif. So either he’s that good or they are that bad; or the pitch did the work.

I wonder how those who are now celebrating and scrupulously avoiding comment on the pitch would have reacted had Australia won the match. It would have been interesting — a word Jason Gillespie used repeatedly while describing the pitch.

The biggest problem with this win is that it will, typically, sweep back under the carpet the issues that should have been sorted out. This has been a series with far too many problems, most of them off the pitch. The BCCI’s management has been pathetic; it’s eye has obviously been off the ball in the past few months and it has shown.

To take just one example, whatever is its much-vaunted Pitches Committee doing when local curators are allowed to do as they please? If Nagpur was official policy, then at least, as Dravid pointed out, make sure that those at the Under-15 and Under-17 levels get the same pitches. And Nagpur doesn’t square with the Wankhede so can we have some uniformity?

On the field, the problems remain. When will we learn that, for all our talent, and we have plenty of it, we will not be the Number 1 team because we don’t have a Number 1 system (and, while we’re at it, because we simply can’t field or catch as well as the Aussies)? That it takes a multi-layered process, with checks and balances and lots of honest, dedicated men, to convert talent into winners?

Are we, for example, planning for the day/series/year when our entire star cast retires in one movement? Dravid, Ganguly, Tendulkar and Laxman are all the same age, and all the wrong side of 30. To replace them at one go will set this team back years, if not a decade or two. Australia suffered in the early 1980s with the retirement of Greg Chappell, Marsh and Lillee and took a decade or so to recover.

There are positives — several of them — to draw from this series. The emergence of Kartik and Kaif, and the possibility of Kaarthick, offer hope. But when the celebrations are over, hopefully the men in charge of cricket will investigate why we lost 2-1 when we should have won this series. And please let’s not blame it on the weather.