It took a long time but Australia has finally fallen from the throne. But it took the retirement of greats like Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist and arrival of greats (time will tell) like Ishant, Gambhir, Duminy, Styen for the fall to happen. It’s the end of an era, just like in 1995 when Australia defeated the West Indies to take the No 1 spot. That victory ended West Indies’ two decade run at the top. Now both South Africa and India have defeated Australia in a space of few months. Australia has been defeated before, they lost to India in 2001 and to England in 2005, but it’s the manner in which they have been crushed says it all, Australia’s time is up.

Since the 1970’s cricket has always had one all dominating team. Its understandable that now people are wondering who is going to be the next No 1. South Africa and India are the leading contenders at the current point in time. But there is nothing to choose between them. Even die hard fans of both teams will have to acknowledge the fact that both teams are pretty neck and neck at the moment. Besides this both teams have a lot of similarities.

Both teams have an inspirational captain. Graeme Smith has been truly wonderful as the captain of South Africa. He got in the hot seat as captain when South Africa was going through a crisis. They had exited the 2003 world cup in a very dis-heartening manner, the Hansie Cronje and match fixing saga was still fresh in memory and then there were the South African selection policies based upon race of players (which did hamper the team in the short run). Captaincy is a tough job any day, but for a bloke just one year old in international cricket these circumstances would have been especially testing. But in these 5 years South Africa has again started to look the force it was in 1990’s under Hansie Cronje, and Graeme Smith has had a big role to play in it.

India has also been lucky to have found Mahendra Singh Dhoni as captain. There was always a feeling that India might not get another captain as Sourav Ganguly. Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble were good, but both of them lacked a certain spark. Dhoni has all the makings of a great leader. He has already won the Twenty20 world cup, a tri-series in Australia, his record in the few test matches he has captained is also fantastic.

Another similarity in the two teams is the quality of pace attack. There is nothing to choose between Zaheer and Ishant on one side and Ntini and Styen on the other. These are the best fast bowlers in world cricket, and they are in form of their life. Both teams also have excellent back-up fast bowlers. Its only in the spin department that India nudge ahead. Harbhajan Singh and Amit Mishra are world class spinners capable of winning matches on their own.

The similarities do not end here. In the past decade there has been a big change in the background of players coming into the team. South Africa has consciously been selecting colored players, it is paying dividends now, and they have a number of colored players in the team who select themselves on merit basis. While India has had no such policy a number of players are coming from smaller towns and lesser known domestic teams. Dhoni is from Jharkhand, Irfan Pathan and Yusuf Pathan have grown up in a mosque, RP Singh and Raina are from UP.

In batting as well, the teams are similar. Both have a string of attacking players. India is led by Gautam Gambhir and Virendar Sehwag at the top, Sachin Tendulkar provides the stability in the middle, and Yuvraj the fireworks lower down the order. They have a line up to intimidate any bowling line up. South Africa have Graeme Smith, AB De Villiers to go after the bowling and Jacques Kallis and the new sensation Jean-Paul Dumily to provide the stability.

Its going to be exciting few years as these two teams battle for the number one spot. India seems to have an edge in batting while South Africa fields better. Both teams also have excellent bowling attacks. It would probably boil down to who has a better bench strength, because players get injured, players retire, players loose form. Australia stayed at the top for so long largely because it was able to find good replacements very quickly. India has managed to replace Ganguly and Kumble very quickly, and it looks like Dravid will also not be missed too much when he goes. South Africa managed to replace Ashwell Prince in a jiffy. As Navjot Singh Sidhu would say ‘Predicting a winner of this battle is like reading a pitch, you don’t know which way it will turn.’

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