The Untouchables get touched up

For much of the summer it felt like an opponent-less series as India, like the Little Big Horns to Custer, performed well but were generally ignored in Steve Waugh's last stand. At any other time the Indians would have left with the stage covered in roses, but instead the bouquets of a drawn series against the world champions had to come from the rest of the world.

Liberal Australians applauded India's batting wonders and the steel brought to these perennially poor travellers by Sourav Ganguly and John Wright. To outbat the Australians at home deserved loud applause, but the masses, spending the season in a cross-country Mexican Wave of standing ovations, saved their most thunderous claps for Waugh.

Australia's series was also up and down, as Waugh's team performed acts of charity not related to leprosy. Simple catches were spilled, easy run-outs botched and, most sensationally, a Test was donated after piling on 556 in the first innings at Adelaide - a second innings of batting impatience preceded another stirring partnership of endurance from Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman. After a ruthless reign it appeared that Waugh's goodbye had opened sentimental sores, and at his final press conference he admitted that maybe it was just a game after all.

It was an uncharacteristic end to a strange series. For the first time since 1993-94, when South Africa went one up at Sydney before losing at Adelaide, Australia had been behind at home. Australian fans don't understand their team losing any more, so after India's win at Adelaide the Basil Fawlty catch-cry of "Don't mention the war" - already ignored by most at the rain-marred Brisbane Test - was ditched totally and replaced with "Don't mention the score".

A few home fans marvelled at, congratulated, and encouraged the Indians to go further. But popular opinion lamented the end of baggy-green domination. In the space of one Test the team had become too old, too slow, and too impatient ... and the squad had too little depth and too many sponsors and leaked letters.

Instead of giving credit to India, it was agreed that everyone would be better off if they concentrated on a happy ending, through Waugh's stage-managed departure. It was like England ignoring a friendly football loss to Australia, South Africans focusing on dominant wins in one-day qualifying series but ignoring the defeat in the final, or an Indian's blind faith in Sachin whether he's failing or flailing.

Of course, Australia hit back after a sloppy first-up bowling performance at the MCG, a trend that continued in the final Test, through Matthew Hayden and Ricky Ponting, and the gushing Waughophiles got their preferred final chapter with Steve's valedictory 80 at the SCG.

The Indians, making most of the running on their way to become only the third team - alongside New Zealand in 2001-02 and South Africa in 1993-94 - to draw a series Down Under in the last ten years, were again seen as the extras at Sydney. An Australian cricket-loving friend of mine actually left during the 353-run Tendulkar-Laxman partnership because he was bored. What he really wanted was Waugh, and he couldn't bear watching the Untouchables getting touched up. A fair-weather recovery session on Bondi Beach was the antidote.

What Ponting must find is a cure for India's batsmen before he goes there for what should be his fourth Test series as captain (provided that the tour of Zimbabwe in May goes ahead). The way India lift against the world champions has created Australia's greatest current rivalry. It is incredible how they can consistently eyeball the Australians yet be out-stared at times by West Indies, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and South Africa. Ponting would do well to find out the reasons before he lands in India in September.

Reinstalling the no-gift policy of his predecessor and copying the efficiency of his world-champion one-day outfit also need to be Ponting priorities. Another is to regularly re-address the issues raised in that leaked letter of the coach John Buchanan after the Adelaide Test, which called the performance "soulless" and suggested that the players had become "unbaggy-green-like".

What couldn't be hushed up by anyone taking more than a superficial glance at the series is that there were potential signs of an empire about to crumble. Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, who were both desperately missed, should provide short-term paper for the cracks, but consistent wicket-takers in the back-up bowing department, and long-term successors to McGrath and Jason Gillespie, need to appear soon on the radar.

Ponting, anointed as Australia's eventual emperor back in his teens, has been handed a tough brief. But now that he finally has his new clothes, he will need to get them dirty in order to keep Waugh's mantle as kings of cricket's castle.