According to Sanjay Bangar, the current Indian test team top order comprising of openers Vijay and Dhawan followed, Kohli, Pujara, and Rahane can do the same magic as of Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly.
“He (Rahul) has created a lot of competition among the boys. Rahul has made it count each time he has gone in to bat. Be it the Test centuries he scored in Sydney, Colombo, Jamaica or the hundreds in ODIs and T20s — Rahul has been fantastic,”
Bangar told TOI.
Under the captaincy of Virat Kohli, the Indian cricket defeated Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka after 22 years, trashing South Africa 3-0 and beating West Indies 2-0 in West Indies. A current lot of players believed that the top order will do well as a batting unit.
“I do believe so, If this group of players continues to perform well — then they could form a line-up which would be similar to the one India had in the early 2000s which had Sachin, Dravid, Ganguly, and Laxman. These players have immense potential and they are well on their way to achieving great things for Indian cricket.”
“The kind of progress this team has made in the last two years (from hovering around World No 7 to becoming World No 1 twice in the last 6 months) — indicates the work being put in. Our goal has been to play an aggressive brand of cricket. The third Test against West Indies last month comes to my mind as we had very little time to force a result as a day-and-half was washed out. But the kind of cricket we played to get a result out of that game shows our hunger to be a top side,”
said Bangar.
India will play three matches test series against New Zealand from 22nd September. This will be a great chance for the Indian team to take number 1 rank from Pakistan in test matches. India became number 1 after winning a third test match against West Indies but lost the number 1 rank because of the fourth test being washed and Pakistan winning the fourth test against England.