England began its preparations for the one-day and T20 series with a mixed bag. They won the first practice game which was billed as Mahendra Singh Dhoni's last game as skipper and lost the second game. Amazingly the second game which Ajinkya Rahane captained the India a team hardly got any coverage which is so typically Indian where we tend to put one person on such a high pedestal that everybody else not only feels inferior but knows that whatever he/she achieves the failure of that other person high up is going to be highlighted more. Not that Dhoni failed, for he showed that with the bat he is still a destructive batsman scoring 23 runs in the final over of the innings. However to ignore the second warm-up game as if it was nothing is typical in India. What these two games showed is that India will be better off chasing than setting a target as the bowlers still haven't quite come to grips with bowling in the slog overs.

Cricketing teams like individual players go through a cycle of achievements. There are good to great periods when the individual or the team is doing well but as the wheel turns the performance starts to dip and the results are not as good as hoped for. There are of course rare occasions when a team or individual is doing so well that the peak performance patch is longer than the one where form dips and the deeds become lesser. These teams and individuals go down as great teams and players.

The Australians pretty much dominated world cricket since the mid 1990s till 2005 when they first stumbled against their old foe England and lost the Ashes. They, as is their wont, struck back the following year when they swept through the Test series at home winning all five Test matches. After that they have seen a see-saw kind of years as they have won at home but struggled overseas. This season having lost to the South Africans there were plenty of questions asked about the team. When uncomfortable questions get asked then a team or the individual need a bit of luck with the next opposition. That's exactly what happened as the Australians got to play Pakistan. Pakistan’s bowling has usually troubled the Australians but its batting has floundered and that's what transpired this time too as the Aussie bowlers bowled their team to wins despite the Pakistani batsmen offering resistance in one innings of every Test. It was the other innings where they collapsed that the Pakistanis met their doom in every Test losing all three matches. Their bowlers also were unable to make much of an impact as David Warner in particular made merry hitting a century before lunch and then scoring the second fastest fifty in Test cricket. Warner was supported by Matt Renshaw who got a massive century, his first in Test cricket and Peter Handscomb also joined the party. For the Pakistanis Younis Khan scored a big hundred and in doing so became the first batsman to get centuries in 11 countries. This is a massive achievement and Younis, who has been a pretty underrated batsman, will hopefully finally get the recognition that he deserves as one of the greats of the game.

There will be pressure on him and skipper Misbah-ul-Haq to make way for younger players but as has been seen in Australia the younger ones still have a long way to go to be the kind of batsmen who can win or save a Test match for their team. Pakistan go to West Indies in a few months and in international cricket that is today an easier tour. Of course with the West Indies having beaten Pakistan in the last Test they clashed in the UAE last year, the Windies will be a lot more confident taking them on at home.

Matt Renshaw and Younis Khan for their big hundreds in the final Test of the series are the joint winners of the accolade of the CEAT International Cricketer of the Week.

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