Brett Lee has rung the curtain down on the importance of the Ashes series between Australia and England when he said that the tour to India in October rivals the one between England and Australia.
It is cricket in the new millennia folks, where India's Pak tour is barely over and the Australian cricketers are already lining Team India in their gunsights.
The epitome of cricket for both these Caucasian countries was always the Ashes series and nothing rivalled it in glory earned - not even the great fights against the power team of Clive Lloyd. For reasons unknown, the English and Australian public played the ostrich and willingly buried their heads to the humiliating losses, just to call their own rivalry as the creator of the best cricket in the world.
Now that the new (historic) front is open, where do we go from here? Recall the famous asiders indulged in by Sourav Ganguly and Steve Waugh in order to score psychological beanie points. Are we to expect something on the same lines?
Probably not. Ricky Ponting is a man moulded from a futuristic die. he will seek to unsettle the Indian team, which has powered to ever greater performances after their 2003-04 tour to Australia, by means other than those used by his illustrious predecessor.
- HARISH DUGH