Cric infoOn the flight from Mumbai to London, I sat alongside Kiran More, the former India wicketkeeper who was not so long ago the chairman of the national selection committee. He was flying in to watch the Lord's Test, but was paying for the trip himself. This is something he planned to do a long time ago. "I am here to watch Sachin, Rahul and Laxman," he said. "A pity Sehwag isn't there." More knows what the rest of us do. The clock is winding down on the golden age of Indian batting. You could even say the golden age of Test batting.
Only Ricky Ponting remains from the great Australian line-up; Brian Lara went long ago; Jacques Kallis is fit and hungry still, but he is on the wrong side of 30. Perhaps AB de Villiers and Hashim Amla will join their ranks before they finish, and Kevin Pietersen, if he finds his second wind, may end up as one of the all-time greats, but India's batting wealth in the last 10 years has been freakish. And while everything is cyclical, as Twenty20 skills grow more and more vital to the professional cricketer, it is likely that the best of Test match batting as we have known it is already behind us. This summer presents an opportunity -
one of the last few - to savour what remains of it. It had seemed improbable in 2007, when India toured England last, that Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid would be back again. Even VVS Laxman was a marginal case. But they have all endured. Tendulkar has grown even more resplendent; Laxman has become India's great saviour; Dravid's powers have waned but he was still able to produce a match-winning innings on a difficult pitch in Kingston last month. Still, it can be said with a degree of certainty - though with Tendulkar nothing can be ruled out - that this it for them as far as England goes: one last summer in what remains the finest and strongest bastion of Test cricket.
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