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Untitled Document
 2007 – A roller coaster year in Indian cricket
1st Jan 2008 23:00 IST
Manish Kumar
Indian cricket oscillated between beauty and banality in yet another roller coaster year that saw the sorrow and grief of the ODI World Cup in the West Indies and the euphoria of the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa.
The country that plunged into a mass depression after their heroes were hanged, drawn and quartered in the World Cup in the West Indies erupted in unbridled joy when its next generation cricketers stunned one and all with the trophy from the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa.
Individually, a never-say-die Sourav Ganguly staged and consolidated what can easily be the mother of all comebacks, Rahul Dravid abdicated the crown of thorn with Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Anil Kumble being the beneficiaries and Gary Kirsten emerged out of the blue to take over the coaching reins.
For record, India won three Test series in a row and while beating Bangladesh 1-0 was not totally unexpected, the victory against England was all the more sweet for it took them more than two decades to tame the English in their own backyard.
And though some felt Shoaib Malik led arguably the weakest Pakistani side ever to cross the border, beating them 1-0 after dominating the three-match series also ended a 28-year-old drought of a home series win against the traditional rivals.
In the one-day arena, beating Sri Lanka and West Indies at home raised the hopes of a World Cup win before all hell broke loose and India's campaign was over as early as in the first round.
Comprehensive wins against the Netherlands and the West Indies did not indicate what was in store when India took on Bangladesh. It turned out to be the triumph of the minnow over the mighty and though a win against unheralded Bermuda kept alive their theoretical chances, eventual finalists Sri Lanka buried Indian hopes with a comprehensive victory at the Queen's Park Oval in Port of Spain.
Greg Chappell had volunteered his head on the chopping block insisting on "process before outcome" and the blunt Australian's roller coaster two-year stint with India came to an unceremonious end, bolstering the theory that great cricketers don't necessarily make great coaches.
In the quest to find Chappell's successor, BCCI appointed Ravi Shastri but he stuck to his more lucrative media assignments and was available only as a short-gap cricket manager for the Bangladesh tour while the venerable Chandu Borde was the makeshift arrangement for the England tour.
Though India lost the ODI series against England and later the home series against Australia, they beat Bangladesh convincingly.
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