Australia's Waterloo
Greg Baum writes in the Age that Australia have had a few false Waterloos over the years, but this one has a distinctly Napoleonic feel about it.
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
Greg Baum writes in the Age that Australia have had a few false Waterloos over the years, but this one has a distinctly Napoleonic feel about it.
Now, the tour that resonates loudly is 1998. India won the first two Tests by massive margins, then lost the dead rubber. Sachin Tendulkar was in his pomp; he was virtually undismissable. Glenn McGrath did not tour, Steve Waugh injured himself, Warne took 10 wickets in three Tests, but at a high price; he was exhausted. Seamers Paul Wilson and Adam Dale, and off-spinner Gavin Robertson, all appeared for Australia, workaday cricketers who between them would play only two other Tests after this series. It was no contest.
Mike Selvey, writing in the Guardian, agrees with Baum, as does Andy Bull in the same paper, but Patrick Kidd, in his Line and Length blog in the Times, says the Mohali loss is more a blip than a terminal decline.
In the Age, Peter Hanlon makes some observations about the Mohali Test.
Australia was the best team in the world until all of those bloody Victorians got a game.
How come Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma get more movement off the pitch than our spinners - at 140 km/h?
Gee, that caught-behind the umpire turned down when India was 400 in front really hurt us.
On the BBC website, Nick Bryant says, "it's the manner of the defeat that has the Aussie cricket cognoscenti worried, because it laid bare the weaknesses and gaps in the once-feared team."
Brydon Coverdale is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. He tweets here