Was it the brilliance of India or simply the inconsistency of South Africa that led to a dramatic series leveller at Kolkata? Whatever the reason may be India deserves all the accolades they get as it is never easy to come back one down in the final Test and draw it! The Indian grit, determination, the fighting spirit and the desire to win was all on display! And after the incredible collapse in the South African first innings engineered by Harbhajan, there was only one winner in the Test match and that was not South Africa.

I thought the comments of the South African captain after the game was spot on! He felt the team wasn’t precise enough in their work in the second Test. "We were not precise enough in our first innings with bat and ball. We dropped a few chances and we never really bowled in the right areas like we did in Nagpur."
That to me was the clear summery of things which took place in the 2nd Test as far as South Africa was concerned. Maybe there was the exception in Hashim Amla who was simply outstanding with his twin hundreds, following up on his performance in the First Test.

India's Sachin Tendulkar (L) celebrates with teammate Harbhajan Singh after India won their second test cricket match against South Africa in Kolkata - REUTERS

In any stretch of imagination Amla was a class act and one feels that he has fulfilled his long promise! I am sure he will be a huge factor for South Africa in the years to come. But the bottom line was, despite his efforts South Africa wasn’t good enough in the game. Boucher’s injury which kept him out of the game too would have definitely been felt.

The weak link of South Africa which was obviously their spin bowling was heavily exposed. Whilst the Indian spinners Harbhajan Singh and Amit Mishra spun webs around the South Africans, Paul Harris the only recognized spinner in the South African line up had a dismal return of 1 for 182 in 50 over’s, which tells a clear tale and indicates the gap in quality in the spin department!

However the South Africans can console themselves with the series levelling draw, but that is more to satisfy themselves than speaking reality as the entire team know that a golden opportunity not just to beat India but to be the top test team in the world has been missed for the second time running!

But what about India? The top team in the ICC test rankings displacing Australia from that position after almost seven years! It has to be an incredible performance without any doubt! India besides earning the plum of US$ 175,000 for winning the top team’s award them along with South Africa has an excellent chance of being the runner up in the ICC ODI table as well, to pocket a further US$ 75,000. The forth coming ODI series between the two countries would serve to decide who the second best ODI team will be.

Back to that great team performance by India. Under M.S. Dhoni’s very cool leadership the Indians have transformed themselves in to superb unit living up to the “Team India” image. As a team in any sport, the Indian team could be the most diverse and least untied. This could be for many reasons. The country being so huge and the cultures, languages, mannerisms and religions differing so vastly, it is never an easy task to unite all of them and get them to play for each other. It was in 1996 when India who were under Sachin Tendulkar displayed how disunited and disjointed they were both on and off the field when touring Sri Lanka. Whilst the world witnessed their poor showing on the field, the events which took place off it were not known to many.

The writer however was close enough to witness the manner in which they set about things, with players from each state forming their own groups and being very distant from each other! It was never healthy for the team as the dressing room too lacked the kind of communication, and vibrancy with the whole scenario being capped with what took place when the team was leaving at the air port, with players exchanging their respective telephone numbers and addresses! It was most surprising to witness a unit of players not knowing such simple details of a fellow team member! True they were very far from each other geographically, but what I witnessed that day was the distance was not just geographical only!

It demonstrated that the players lacked the emotional connection! Now what I attempted to prove here was the difficulty the Indians as a team would face. In the context to have the current Indian team perform and win should be a huge feather in the cap of the Captain. Don’t also forget that he had many captains under him. Dravid, Tendulkar and even Sehwag were senior to Dhoni! Having all of them give their best to the team’s cause may look obvious and the done thing though it may not be as easy in reality!
With such a background winning not just the second Test match but becoming the top test team in the world should be viewed as huge achievement from both a cricketing perspective and as a country as it possess so much of diversity in itself!

Roshan Abeysinghe is a leading cricket promoter and an international cricket commentator