Well done India - well deserved series win. Were the better team pretty much throughout. Australia handicapped themselves with bizarre selection decisions, and showed some uncharacteristic lapses in application. We also stopped doing the little things well.
For India its now ahead of them to show that they can reproduce this level consistently and against all opponents. They match up, and play well, against Australia, not having lost to them in 6 encounters. If Australia continues to beat all other teams, then it will remain on India to win a series in Australia before the #1 mantle is considered to have been passed, but they are definitely now the team that has emerged that can beat Australia consistently.
For the Aussies, hall of mirrors time boys. Ponting's lack of acumen when required to think on his feet showed this series, most noticeably in slowing our over rate to a crawl as he over-fretted, -worried, and fiddled with his bowlers and their field. Our lack of a specialist spinner was exposed horribly in the first three tests, and White's inclusion in the team defied logic. Our pace attack was poor, with Clark and Lee suddenly looking their age. Haddin had a poor series, and will need to produce against NZ or the selectors might be tempted to experiment with Ronchi. On the positive side, Krejza made a good debut, Katich was fair-to-good in the role of opener again - enough, with the Windies tour to suggest that he could fill the role for a few years, and Watson finally got an decent run in the team and while not setting the world on fire statistically, didn't look out of place as an allrounder in the team, although I'd like to see him produce more with the bat.
Without having sour grapes, I'd have to say that you would have thought it unlikely that Dhoni would manage to do something nearly as bad as Ponting did yesterday, but the period where Sehwag and Bhajji were bowling wides to Hayden and Hussey with the field all back on the fence was mind-bogglingly poor and was in many ways as unedifying a spectacle as Ponting's efforts yesterday. At least Ponting had the small fig-leaf of attempting to stay within the laws regarding over-rates - Dhoni was just being defensive (which in itself is fair enough) but doing it in an obviously counter-productive manner. The last couple of days have been a terrible advertisement for Test cricket.
In a way, I'm relieved that Australia and India will now have something of a break from one another - and it has nothing to do with not likely losing (I loved the 05 Ashes). The Border-Gavaskar Trophy should be the showcase of world cricket, but as teams, the heights that they produce against each other have been, in the last few encounters, outweighed by the number of issues that are bad for cricket and quite unpleasant. There's blame on both sides, but more than anything, I think a bit of a period without clashing with the same personalities over and over again is what both teams need. Just my opinion.
