It's a little bit of history repeating ...

Three decades ago, a tour of Pakistan spelt the end of the then Fabulous Four of Indian cricket, writes Suresh Menon in his column on dreamcricket.com.

The famed Indian quartet of spinners, Bishan Bedi, Erapally Prasanna, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar and Srinivas Venkatraghavan ceased to be a force in international cricket, although their careers went on for a bit longer. Zaheer Abbas mainly, and other Pakistani batsmen helped to push over the edge one of the finest combinations of spinners the game had ever seen. Only weeks earlier they had nearly helped India win in Australia, a series they ultimately lost 2-3.

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The recent reversals against Sri Lanka may or may not see the end of another Fabulous Four, the middle order which finished with an average of around 20, and without a single century. Ajantha Mendis seems to have done to the batsmen what Zaheer Abbas did to the bowlers all those years ago. It is possible that years from now we will point to this series when we talk about the decline of India's finest middle order. Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman were made to look ordinary by Muralitharan and Mendis who claimed 47 wickets between them at 20.1.