RaviSez

Often times, things are rarely as good or as bad in cricket as the media tends to portray it. Every newspaper in India is on a Ganguly hunt, yelling at the peak of their voices to remove him as a captain. Apparently things are bad because India failed to win the series they were expected to take with a glee, what with the inexperience of the Pakistani side. But what most people are forgetting is the wonderful performance put forth by their inexperienced side. True: it would have been a walk over, had Asim Kamal decided if he is just a lower-order batsman and not fought on the last day of the first tets. True: it would have been a second place at the ICC championship table( but with a considerable distance from Australia in first), had Younis Khan told himself, he's not good enough a test player. True: Sourav Ganguly would have been lauded on what a great captain he was if Inzamam thought to himself, he's the only batsman that can show some gumption in the Pakistani side. What people are forgetting is, that the Pakistani team never once thought they were out of sight inspite of people putting them down as a weak team in front of the Indian batting behemoths. Which naturally inspired people to think, this Indian team which showed tremedous ambition in Australia and came quite close to beating them at home. Pakistan, in this series showed similar traits that India did in 2003 in Australia. Which is good for them. And also good for International cricket. Because, if a team like India, who in my opinion are hyped up only because of the following of the game in the country, were as close to claiming the second spot in terms of rankings, there is something wrong with the other teams. A quick look at the other teams will tell you that barring England, nobody as performed consistently in the past few years. South Africa is in doldrums. New Zealand has no spine. Sri Lanka nope. About the other teams, the less said, the better. So it was no surprise that India with it's mediocre performances were seen as contenders for the coveted second spot in International cricket. Teams have forgotten that they have to fight for the top spot and not play dead to Australia.
Which brings us to Pakistan. If Pakistan can revive with the way it did, it can only be good for test cricket in the long run. If there are competitors, the sport will move forward and become more interesting. Kudos to the Pakistan team for a well fought series. I hope they show the same effort in the ODI series as well. Infact, given the Indian team's travails, my bet will be that Pakistan will come out as a winner at the end of it.