India need a bowling superstar to justify No.1 ranking

One doesn't need to look at the rankings table to identify a champion side, writes Simon Briggs in the Daily Telegraph. India, he says, have relied heavily on their batsmen to reach where they have, but their bowling attack is hardly comparable to Australia's when they had reached the summit, or West Indies' in the eighties.

You can almost see their Test cricket as an extension of their one-day skills. Virender Sehwag’s 293 was a 50-over innings that happened to go on for a whole day.

This is the modern way. But it is also an ancient way. The Indians are turning the clock back to the 1930s and 40s, decades when the giant score was the building block of every Test series win.

That was the last era when pitches were flat enough, and bowlers subservient enough, for a batsman (Sehwag now, Bradman then) to eye up the possibility of scoring 300 runs in a day.