The last week has been nothing short of terrific — a double hundred at Lord’s in the 2000th Test, which was also the 100th between the two sides. If you score runs when the team wins, the pleasure of the personal score becomes that much more important. The win in the final hour of play at Lord’s will give us a lot of confidence going into Trent Bridge. We know India are going to come back strong, but we will be concentrating on what we need to do, rather than worry about the opposition.
We had a near-perfect performance, but there are areas to improve on. While batting in the second innings at Lord’s, we lost a cluster of wickets. Graeme Swann can also look to pick up more wickets in the second Test. Swanny is the best spinner in the world and will be a huge factor for us in the remaining Tests. The pitch at Trent Bridge is a good wicket. It swings a lot and in terms of spin, I am not sure whether it will do a lot. But overall, the pitch will do a lot more than at Lord’s. The big thing about Nottingham is the swinging ball, so watch out for the faster bowlers. Andy Flower, our coach, has been a great proponent of the theory of what we can do rather than think about other issues. Andy never forces his judgment and has a fantastic cricket brain. He keeps us grounded, whenever we win a Test match. We don’t regard one win as a finished product. We move on to the next match. What makes life easy for us is that we have the best bowling attack in the world.
If we bat consistently, as we have been doing for the last one year or so, we will get better as a team. Finally, a word of praise for two of my former teammates, Rahul Dravid and Praveen Kumar. Rahul is such a fantastic figure in cricket, a great servant of the sport. He played a lone hand and gave some respectability to India’s score. I was very proud when he got the runs. PK got his first five-wicket haul and had his name up on the Lord’s honours board. It was a proud moment for him and I
was happy
for the bloke.
