Hacker: No success please, we're British

A lot of British sports fans are masochists. The pain has become so ingrained that it is now part of the pleasure. Think Gazza’s tears, think Murray’s glorious failures, and think of Scotland’s 14 years and counting of missing international football tournaments. There’s something undeniably poetic about British failure. As such, this next sentence is sure to shake these fans to their very core. This summer England became the number one country in the world at Test Cricket. It doesn’t sit right, but its true; their historic Ashes win in Australia has been followed up with a home series win against the previous number one, India. It wasn’t just a win, it was a 4-0 whitewash. It wasn’t just a 4-0 whitewash; each win in the series was as convincing as the previous. There remained two standout performers of the series and surprisingly, considering the final result, they come from both teams.

Ian Bell has made no secret of the fact that he wants to bat at number three for England. The only trouble is that Jonathan Trott, the regular in that position, has a Test batting average of 57.59, which puts him just ahead of Garry Sobers and just behind the immortal Wally Hammond in the top 10 batsmen of all time. But after his recent century and double century, Bell has proved to everyone that he can bat in that position, where he so often failed when he was a younger and less accomplished player. This brings a startlingly formidable complexity to the England batting order, with Pietersen looking back to his imperial best and Cook still shining from his heroics in Australia. It will be another challenge altogether to stay at number one but for now, England deserve the plaudits, much like the second and arguably greater man of the summer, Rahul Dravid.

In the build-up to this tour, all the focus was on the ‘Little Master’, Sachin Tendulkar and whether he could achieve the unparalleled feat of scoring his 100th international century. In fact it wasn’t to be; rather it was Rahul ‘always the bridesmaid’ Dravid who shone and showed what an underrated player he’s been in his 20 years at the crease. He made 461 runs at an average of 76.83, which accounted for 23 per cent of India's runs. In the tone-setting first innings, he made 388 runs at an average of 184, and 35 per cent of India's runs. Their losing setting however could compromise these awesome statistics but they merely embellish his greatness. This is also why Dravid's best hundred of the series was arguably his last. During the first two he had a legitimate expectation that his runs might win the match and the series. At The Oval, however, the series was gone, and it very quickly became apparent that India were going to lose the match regardless of what Dravid did. Dravid had all the justifications he desired to fail. It would have been easy to allow the tiredness to take hold and to look around for help from a depleted dressing room, yet he managed to achieve the concentration necessary to resist the metronomic England bowling attack. For this Rahul Dravid ,“The Wall” as he is affectionately known, should be the defining memory of the Indians number one tenure.

Having a number-one team in the world doesn’t have to be disquieting; indeed the Australians managed it in separate sports and still retained that inimitable ‘quality’ of self-confidence. So The Journal has one suggestion to get us through this new period: temporarily suspend our critical faculties. Shut down the part of you that wonders whether England are only number one because the competition is not as strong as it once was or could be. Ignore the questions about whether they will be able to win on the sub-continent, or who their batting reserves might be, or whether or not Monty Panesar is going to be good enough to cut it as their second spinner. Snub the enjoyment found in these islands of glorious failure and enjoy winning…because it might not last long.