Harbhajan and Kumble at home are arguably the greatest spin duo for last 20-30 years. In India, the 2 of them are more than enough to win games on their own, and thats why India have been so difficult to beat in their own backyard.
IMO, if scoring runs against Australia is the barometer for any batsman playing cricket to separate him from good to great then for the Aussies who do not get to play themselves, scoring runs in India against Kumble and Harbhajan should be the standard for any Australian player. The Aussies themselves have recognized this by terming the tour to India as 'the Final Frontier' and many have said that they consider winning in India to be more important than winning the Ashes. By this standard, Gilchrist has failed. .
Spin, until Flintoff exposed his weakness of bowlers coming around the wicket to him was always his achillies heel. So Its pretty rough to say Gilchrist has failed in India when he played two superb innings in this two tours there i.e mumbai 01 & bangalore 04.
In 2001 like Ponting, had a weird remainder of the series againts the guile of Harbhajan but he didn't exactly look out of form. While outside the big hundred in Bangalore 04, he certainly imroved his game againts spin a great deal. His second his 49 in the Chennai test for all those who saw it would agree.
So i can't agree Gilchrist was failure in India.
Few players can play that innings, and that innings was special. However special innings dont equal a special player. There are plenty of very average/good players around the world who have put in special performances over the years. Vaughan is one. Laxman is another. Astle is one more.Depending on how you rate Hick's 178, he could be another. It doesnt mean that any of them are great players.
I see where you are going with this. That Gilly wasn't a average player of spin & it is well proven by the fact the behind those three super hundreds in the sub-continent he follows that up with a string of low scores. All true as i just mentioned spin was his achillies heel that was well known.
However, all of this is irrelevant to the Gilchrist discussion as we are essentially talking about the attack that Gilchrist played between 2005-2007 as opposed to the attacks he played before.
It should be fairly obvious that the Ashes attack is irrefutably the best attack he played against in his career. The 2 SA attacks that he played thereafter including Pollock/Ntini/Nel/Kallis were also very good(in the context of that series). The Indian attack that toured Australia was Australia better than many attacks that have reached those shores in the early part of this decade.
All true again. But i can't agree with the stance that just because Gilchrist pumelled some really mediocre bowling attacks pre 05 Ashes. Its not like none of those innings weren't pressure i.e Hobart 99, Mumbai 01, Kandy/Bangalore 04, heck even SCG 03 (even though it was a dead rubber).
I seriously doubt any other batsman/keeper in the games history & i'd be specific with batsmen/keepers here & speak of the Andy Flowers, Denis Lindsay's, Les Ames, Sangakkara's could have played such an innings coming so low down. At least one thing you must agree, is that Gilly perfected the art of batting @ 7 & doing superb rescue act/demoralisation of the opposition.
Just like how i always saw that the fact Australia struggled to adapt to the quality swing bowling when the lost in 05. Was clearly down more due to the lack of facing it on a consistent basis compared to their 90s compatriots than their inability to play such bowling.
Same argument can be said about Gilly from 05-07 for me. If Gilly played in the 90s he wouldn't have seen a 60+ average that i'm sure of. But he still would have been able to be the same destructive Gilchrist that he was & would have still retired with great accolades.
