In 2006 in Mumbai, India sent England in to bat

In 2006 in Mumbai, India sent England in to bat: Louis Vuitton UK strange. England totalled 400 but even then Ajay Jadeja, the former Indian player who had been banned for match-fixing, kept saying on television that only two results were possible, a draw or a win for India: strange. Then on the last afternoon several home players decided the best way to play for a draw was to see how high into the air they could slog the off-breaks of Shaun Udal. So England’s two most meritorious wins in India have been the most recent and the one at Madras in 1984-85, when Neil Foster took 11 wickets with his lively outswing, and both Graeme Fowler and Mike Gatting made double centuries in sapping heat. But this most recent has to be the best of all. You could see what it meant to the England players as Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann took wicket after wicket in India’s second innings: Virender Sehwag for nine, Sachin Tendulkar for eight, Virat Kohli for seven, all groping as blindly as England’s batsmen – bar Alastair Cook and Matt Prior – had in Ahmedabad. Never have you seen such animation from this generation of England cricketers as they appealed for catches and lbws then celebrated wildly: Panesar was by no means the most excited when he charged down the pitch waving his arms. They knew what they were doing: beating India at their own spinning game Louis Vuitton Canada, in their home of cricket, and achieving a result that will be remembered through the ages.