4 reasons to cherish India's series victory in Australia

2019 has got off to a dream start for the Indian cricket team as Virat Kohli's men completed a historic series victory against Australia at the SCG. For the first time in history, India have won a Test series on Australian shores.

Despite the loss in Perth and the rain in Sydney, victories at Adelaide and Melbourne were enough.

This series is sure to go down as one of Indian cricket's all-time greatest moments. People will remember this effort by Kohli's men for a long time to come.

While the series scoreline is something that will please every Indian fan, there are a lot of other positives and aspects to cherish for Indian cricket that hint at a bright future.

Here is a list of four such aspects:

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#4 Monkey off the back

Australia v India - 4th Test: Day 5

The biggest positive is definitely coming back with a series victory. The Indian team has been touring Australia since 1947 but had never won a Test series before this. The lack of a series victory in Australia was a big hole in India's list of achievements.

However, Kohli's team has rewritten history. Finally, the Indian cricket team has got the monkey off its back. India have now won a Test series in every Test playing country they have visited except for South Africa.

This is not something that India has not come close to doing before. In 2004, if not for some heroics by Steve Waugh in his final Test innings, India would have won the series. In 2008, if not for some terrible umpiring decisions, India could have returned victorious.

However, in 2018, India finally got its big moment. At the Sydney Cricket ground, the same venue as those two games, Kohli lifted the trophy which brought a 71-year old wait to an end.

This is significant not just because of the first ever series win in Australia, but also for the belief it sets in the team. Now, this team and the future ones can believe they can win anywhere and everywhere. While South Africa remains the final frontier, this team will now trust itself to go and win there too.

For this group of players, the victory is well deserved. Despite the scorelines in South Africa and England, the fight from the team was there for everyone to see. Apart from the humiliating defeat at Lord's, in all other games, India gave a competitive account of themselves. If not for a batting collapse here and there, the results could have been very different.

In Australia, this team finally got its well-earned reward. Now they will have the confidence to go anywhere and win.

The Indian cricket fans also got a deserved moment of elation. After years of waking up early morning to disappointment and heartbreak, the fans finally got to celebrate the moment they had waited for so many years.

#3 Rishabh Pant's ascendancy

Australia v India - 4th Test: Day 5

A look at India's Test cricket history shows that the wicket-keeper role has always been a problem for the Men in Blue. Seldom has the team found a player who is solid with the gloves and can give solid contributions with the bat too.

Except for MS Dhoni and Syed Kirmani, no wicket-keeper has ever played more than 50 games for India as the designated wicket-keeper. Among players who have played more than 10 games, Dhoni's average of 38.09 is the highest for any glovesman in history for India in red-ball cricket.

Ever since Dhoni's retirement, Wriddhiman Saha has been India's full-time keeper. The Bengal keeper is one of the finest a team can hope to have behind the wicket. His glove work is arguably the best in world cricket at the moment. However, his batting was barely reliable and left a lot to desire

A serious injury to Saha just at the start of India's overseas cycle left India looking for a replacement at the worst possible time. India's first move was to turn to experienced heads in Parthiv Patel and Dinesh Karthik. After both failed to impress, Kohli's side decided to give young Rishabh Pant a debut in the third Test in England.

The Delhi keeper has not looked back since. He has already got two centuries to his name outside the subcontinent, which is more than any Indian wicketkeeper has achieved in the past. Not to forget, the 21- year-old twice lost his wicket at 92 in the home series against West Indies.

In the 9 Test matches Pant has played so far, he has scored 696 runs at an average of 49.71. In Australia, the Delhi Daredevils star was the series' second highest run scorer, only behind the sensational Cheteshwar Pujara, with 350 runs to his name. To get more runs than Virat Kohli speaks volumes in itself.

While his incredible 159 at SCG inflated his run count, Pant contributed with at least a 20 or a 30 in every innings. With India's faltering tail, these were more than meaningful contributions at his batting spot.

Pant is still an extremely young player and naturally still has a lot of things to improve upon. There is clearly work needed on many aspects of his game, like his temperament while batting or his work with the gloves. But he has already shown signs of improvement and there is nothing to suggest he will not continue to become even better with time.

While he entertained fans with his war of words from behind the stumps in Australia, he would have put a smile on Kohli's face with the knowledge that India have found a wicketkeeper who is likely to serve them for more than a decade.

#2 New group of batsmen emerge

Australia v India - 4th Test: Day 1

With Prithvi Shaw's injury and the miserable form of both KL Rahul and Murali Vijay, India were left in a tough situation with their opening pair. Mayank Agarwal, who was not originally selected in the team, was called up after the Perth defeat.

The Karnataka opener was left with the daunting task of making his Test debut in front of a packed Melbourne Cricket Ground on Boxing Day. That is the kind of occasion that can get to the best, but Agarwal showed no nerves while scoring 76 in his first Test innings.

The biggest indicator of his skill came in the second innings when he scored 46 runs with great resolve despite the whole batting unit collapsing in front of him. Agarwal followed this up with another sublime knock of 77 at Sydney.

Quite clearly, Agarwal has shown he is more than ready for the grind of Test cricket. And that should come as no surprise to fans of Indian cricket who have seen him get one big score after another in Ranji Trophy and for India 'A'.

The 27-year-old has scored an unprecedented amount of runs in the last two years and people were right to question why it took so long for him to get his debut. With Agarwal and Shaw, who has also made an incredible start to his Test career, India can feel confident about their opening pairing.

Another big positive was Hanuman Vihari, who impressed with a fighting half-century on debut at The Oval. While he failed to register a big score in Australia, the tenacity about him was there to see.

Playing in an unnatural role as an opener at the MCG, he scored only eight runs but he played out 66 balls, thus blunting the sting of the new ball. Prior to that match, this was something that most Indian openers had failed to do. Even at Perth and SCG, Vihari showed he belonged, and big scores from him in Test cricket should not be long away.

#1 The fast bowling

Australia v India - 4th Test: Day 4

We can argue that this was the weakest Australian team in memory and that previous Indian teams would have also defeated them. We can maybe even say that past teams would have done better in England or South Africa.

Maybe the batting would have, but would have they have won more matches? Probably not. The biggest reason behind India's victory was the sensational fast bowling attack, something India has not had before - at least not of this quality.

In both England and South Africa, India regularly managed to take 20 wickets. That was probably the biggest reason why fans were optimistic about this team's chances abroad.

Despite the impressive performances of the bowlers on the last two tours, there were doubts about how they would perform on the relatively flatter pitches of Australia. However, this group of bowlers proved why they are the arguably the best group India has ever produced, and did plenty of damage on Australian soil.

Over the four Tests, no Australian player got a century, which is an extremely rare occurrence for them on home soil.

While Jasprit Bumrah stole the show with an astonishing 21 wickets in four games, both Ishant Sharma and Mohammed Shami also contributed immensely with 11 and 16 wickets respectively. While the wickets show their statistical contribution, the most important part was the trouble they caused the Australian batsmen.

All three of them extracted maximum possible swing and bounce from the wicket, and made life extremely difficult for the Australian batters.

Ultimately, this was only a culmination of a whole year of great work. In 2018 Indian pacers took 179 wickets, which is the highest ever in a calendar year by an Indian team. They broke the previous record of 125 wickets by a significant margin.

They also managed the best strike rates and averages ever for an Indian team. All three of Bumrah, Ishant and Shami took more than 40 wickets in the year.

Both in quality and depth, the current bowling attack stands out from any the country has seen before. The above-mentioned trio along with Bhuvneswar Kumar and Umesh Yadav form an impeccable attack.

For Indian fans who have grown up watching mediocre fast bowling for ages, these performances were almost a dream come true.