Birthday Gift :)

There can't be any better Birthday gift to mother India than a scintillating 'series-win' in the home-of-cricket and the Indian cricket team deserves all the adulation.

Despite all the controversies surrounding the decision to back-out of follow on in the 3rd innings of the Oval test doing rounds everywhere, the coveted series win could not be outsmarted by the final test result.

One can easily understand the vested reasons behind Dravid's decision as it is simply the fear of losing the series had England put up a decent total on the board if they were following on. Because batting on a track like Oval in the 4th innings is more than a nightmare for Indians ,though touted to be the best line up in the world.

Even the batsmen gave a slice of their fears in 3rd innings itself when they chose to bat instead make England follow-on and they were 6 down before declaring. That may perhaps be the reason for Dravid's decision. And all he thought was to put the blame on bowlers fitness which eventually evoked mixed response.

As he is known, the Wall always blocks everything and he did the same. But this incident will remain as the recent blot in Indian test cricket.

The other side was perhaps more of a team spirit and thirst to win. They played as a team and everyone contributed their bit to the victory, except a few exceptional performances by Zaheer in the Nottingham test and kumble's magic with both bat and ball at the Oval.

The pick of the series is the opening pair of Karthik-Jaffer pair who seem to be on the right track for solving India's opening woes. Karthik in particular was exceptional as an opener, portrayed right mix of defense and technique and had won the accolades for his efforts.

The series win showed perfect signs of India improving from over the traumatic world cup exit, with excellent blend of youth experience contributing their bit to wipe of stains.

All the media hype is well deserved, as winning England in England is never easy.If it was 2-0 it would have given us more reasons to celebrate, however this is not bad in anyway.

For the upcoming One-day series and the following tours, as always, we keep our fingers crossed !

Thanks for reading :)