South Africa still need to shake the choker's tag IMO. In this recent series we saw them well below their potential. They dropped important catches, Smith still hasn't figured out how to handle Zaheer, Amla played loose shots which is uncharacteristic of him. You could say ABDV was unlucky, recieved a couple of gems, but he was below par too. And Prince did alright, but didn't convert his starts into big performances. Their bowling was lackluster after Steyn and Morkel - Tsotsobe looked loose, got quite a few wickets (and dropped catches) from poor shots rather than good bowling, and Harris isn't going to trouble any good lineups soon. And relying on Kallis for 15 overs a day is proving to be harder.
India's pace stocks, frankly, suck. Sree has his good spells, and his bad. Ishant hasn't produced any of his venom he should early on recently, his good spells seem to come once every 3 games, he needs to be dropped. Zak his shouldering the burden of the attack on his own. As for spin...Bahjji for the last year and a half has lost his bite, although his last couple of spells in RSA seemed promising.
Our batting is either old - Sachin, Laxman, Dravid - or struggling - Yuvraj, Raina. Gambhir should hit his prime in the next couple of years, looks very good. Viru failed at his biggest test -he'll still be a massive force when the ball isn't moving around too much, but he is unreliable. Especially considering a lot of his dismissals come from poor shots rather that technical deficiencies. Pujara looks promising, Kohli might be up to Test quality too. Rohit Sharma is lazy.
England have a well drilled bowling unit and a promising batting lineup...but there are concerns. They did switch off in phases, KP isn't dominating as frequently as he used too, Swann has shown signs of weakness against quality aggressive batting. Strauss' captaincy is ordinary, and a lineup with strokemakers like KP, Bell and Prior shoring up the lower-middle order can be prone to collapse.
The next couple of years will be very interesting.
