Is this really the best Indian team in the last 15 years?
Sometimes, when you're winning it's easy to just ride the wave and think everything is working just fine. There is a saying no? Don't fix what ain't broken.
India is the No.1 ranked Test team in the world and after a second win against Australia, there have been many proclamations from all corridors of India bringing one of their best sides ever to Australia.
Like always, the devil is in the detail and today we try to delve a bit deeper and find out whether all these proclamations are actually true and measure up this team among the best that have toured in the last decade or so (after all Ravi Shastri did proclaim this unit to be the best team to have toured in last 15-odd years).
As an added factor let's compare the oppositions the teams were up against because that makes a huge difference to the records.
#1 The fast bowling unit
First, if we talk about fast bowling you've got to say that the combination of Ishant Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, and Shami is probably one of the better attacks in the world right now. If we have to compare them with a trio of fast bowlers that we'd had in the last 15 years then Zaheer Khan, Sreesanth and RP Singh (the trio that helped in the triumph in England) comes to mind.
If we compare the two then you can say that the trio of Zaheer, Sreesanth, and RP Singh was probably more potent as a new ball attack and was able to cause a lot more damage with the new ball than the current line-up.
But, if we dig deeper (as is the theme of this piece, isn't it?), we see the current line-up being more consistent, aggressive and never letting up on the opposition. The current bowling line-up is overall more potent throughout all the junctures whether the ball is new or old and it does give them an edge over the previous attacks in terms of its effectiveness and lethal nature.