At the start of the series there were two main topics of conversation: could England make it to number one and would Sachin Tendulkar make his hundredth international hundred? England, of course, have achieved their goal in the grandest manner but for Tendulkar, one of the true greats of the game, the wait goes on.
There have been glimmerings of the Sachin of old. In the second innings at Trent Bridge he was the only member of the much vaunted batting line-up to offer any resistance and the same was true here. He had played fluently for his forty as the innings lay in ruins at the other end and his dismissal, run out by a deflection from Graeme Swann’s hand, rather summed up his tour so far.
Unfortunately, so did the rest of the top order batting, which rolled over in the face of a sustained burst from Jimmy Anderson. On the same pitch on which England had scored over 700 they looked all at sea, although Rahul Dravid seemed to be a little unlucky. MS Dhoni, for the second time in the match, showed some character and Praveen Kumar’s innings entertained everyone except the increasingly exasperated Graeme Swann, but the game was wrapped up by tea by a humiliating margin and the celebrations were well and truly underway.
So, England are number one in the world. Lord MacLaurin was overly optimistic in his original desire to have got there by 2007 but a lot of hard work by a lot of people has got them to the pinnacle and they thoroughly deserve it. The challenge now is to stay there.
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