Gautam Gambhir is emerging as the leading batsman of the new generation © AFP

India’s magnificent performance that helped draw the second Test was nearly as satisfying as the comprehensive victory in the first, and for a very different reason. While the greatest batting line-up in the world has won Tests in style, once memorably after following on, it has sometimes disappointed by its inability to bat through six or seven sessions in the second innings. When the last century has been scored, and the final figures are tallied, greatness will be decided as much by the ability to win as the skill to bat on for a draw.

It has been a decade since India batted 180 overs as they did in Napier, to draw a Test match. That was in Mohali, when centuries from Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid saw them bat through 183 overs to save a match where they had been dismissed for 83 in the first innings.

By batting for over ten and a half hours, one of the side’s most attacking batsmen, Gautam Gambhir, indicated that at 27, he is emerging as a leading batsman of the new generation. He is also the allrounder of the new generation, a certainty in all three forms of the game. Among batsmen, only Virender Sehwag and MS Dhoni can make that claim.

Still, India’s batting should not take the focus away from their atrocious catching in the New Zealand innings. It is a long time since they have dropped so many catches close to the wicket. When you consider that the team has three players with 100-plus catches in Tests, it might be tempting, in the modern spirit, to call this their best catching side. But the habit of
not catching can be catching.

Much is being made of the fact that the New Zealand authorities have been excessively kind to India by preparing wickets that have drawn the teeth of their own seam bowling. Wasim Akram has called it cowardice. It is not that, but professional respect for opponents who have the better seam bowlers. The hosts will have to take a chance, however, for the final Test in
Wellington and go with a track that could just as easily backfire on them. But at 0-1 down you have to take the risk.

With that casual insouciance that comes easily to columnists who write on the game, I had predicted a 3-0 win for India after the first Test, and spent much of the first half of the Napier Test wondering how to make more palatable the words I was about to eat. Some years ago, one writer published a photograph of himself literally eating his words (and washing it down with
wine). It is more difficult to do now, since swallowing a computer is not easily done. So, I have a little more reason than the rest of India to thank Messrs Gambhir, VVS Laxman, Tendulkar and Dravid.

Briefly, in the last two away series, in Sri Lanka and Australia, India
seemed to revert to type as poor travellers, losing the opening Tests in
Colombo and Melbourne respectively. By winning in Hamilton they have
arrested that brief trend, and got back on track with their record in the
five years before that where they won first Tests in Pakistan, Bangladesh,
Zimbabwe and South Africa and drew the opener in Pakistan, West Indies,
Bangladesh and England.

For decades, India suffered from the First Test Blues where, after losing
the first Test they found it impossible to get back into the series. In
this decade, they have reversed that record to a large extent, and shaken
off their reputation as poor starters. Hamilton, therefore, is important
both for itself, and for what it says about the recent Indian teams.
Perhaps in the past, apart from the problems of acclimatisation, there was
also the mindset which was happy to settle for a draw at best. Captains
were reluctant to take risks, and in cricket, as in life, fortune tends to
favour the brave.

MS Dhoni is an attacking captain, New Zealand have one of the
weakest bowling attacks in international cricket while India have one of
the strongest batting line-ups. If Hamilton is any indication, anything
less than a 3-0 win for India would count as unsatisfactory. New Zealand's
best bet is to prepare seaming tracks that suit their bowlers, and hope
their batsmen fare better against India's medium-pacers.

In 1967, India lost 4-0 to Australia, and skipper Tiger Pataudi said at the
end of that series that "just as we were beginning to find our feet, the
series was over." A 2-2 finish might have been a fairer result, but by the
time the team arrived in New Zealand, India had found their bearings. They
won 3-1, the last time they won a series in New Zealand. Statistically, it
is still India's best performance abroad; it was also the first time
India had won the first Test of an away series.

One bad afternoon's cricket has spelt the end of India's dreams in the
first Test of many series. Even in the 1990s, a decade by when
professionalism in attitude and physical fitness is supposed to have
finally arrived in India, they continued to lose the first Test with
alarming regularity. Only twice in the decade, in Bangladesh and
Zimbabwe did they win the first Test. In 22 series abroad, they lost the
first Test 12 times. Before that, first-Test wins in Auckland in 1976 and
Lord's in 1986, merely served to show up the overall poor record.

Sourav Ganguly first began to reverse the trend, and now Dhoni has carried
it forward. If one decade's positive cricket has served to erase more than
half a century's uncertainty before that, then that might be the real
significance of the Hamilton win.

The philosopher Umberto Eco has written thus about pornographic movies, "whose true and sole aim is to stimulate the spectator's desire, from beginning to end, and in such a way that, while his desire is stimulated by scenes of various and varied copulations, the rest of the story counts for nothing. Substitute 'six-hitting' for 'copulations' and you have a pretty accurate description of the Christchurch one-day international.

Thirty one sixes were hit on the day, and cricket, ostensibly a game between bat and ball was reduced to a game between bat and bat. This was cricket as pornography, in the finest traditions (if we can use that word for a format that is so young) of Twenty20.

It was magnificent, they said of the charge of the Light Brigade (cannons to the left of them, etc), but it was not war. Likewise, the one-dayer was magnificent, but it was not cricket. How can it be when bowlers were around merely to play straight men to batsmen who supplied the punch with all the joy of stand-up comics?

I had written (on the ESPN website) before the start of the one-day series that it could see one-day cricket's first-ever double century. This was due to three factors - the size of the grounds, the form of the batsmen, and above all, the influence of Twenty20 where hitting into the stands was part of the fun.

Instead of getting to the pitch of the ball, batsmen had developed the technique of getting the front foot out of the line and swinging through. It meant that straight sixes were hit with across bat, or, as Herschelle Gibbs once showed, batsmen could actually swivel and pull the ball to third man.

Sadly, the bowlers are being taken out of the equation (although it might have been interesting to see how Daniel Vettori might have reacted to the carnage in Christchurch), and that cannot be good for the game.

The one-day game, it has been said often enough, is about batting. And when teams make over 700 runs in a day in perfect batting conditions, with flair and flourish, bringing joy to spectators, it might be churlish to complain.

Wasn't it wonderful to watch Tendulkar and Yuvraj and Raina and Ryder and McCullum? Yes, but as Eco said, a movie in which there was only copulation would be intolerable. Physically for the actors, and economically for the producer.

And it also would be psychologically intolerable for the spectator. For the transgression to work, it must be played out against a background of normality. In porno movies, time is wasted by showing actors commuting or climbing stairs or changing clothes or whatever. In one-day cricket, the wickets, the run outs, the fielding play the same role - that of reminding us of normality.

And then the sex - or the six - takes over.