As the young fans stood in a queue, flipping pages of their autograph books to see if they had enough pages left, their excitement was not an indication of the interest in this low-profile one-day series but in Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s Indian cricket team.

Going into the last match on Sunday, they are in a position where every game is an opportunity to set the bar higher after already having set an Indian record by winning nine ODIs in a row. Though the team don’t have an array of stars like Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Mohammad Azharrudin, Anil Kumble, Sourav Ganguly or Rahul Dravid, names such as Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Dhoni and Zaheer Khan are now starting to command an aura of their own.

“One of the main reasons why this is the best Indian team is because we enjoy each other’s success. We are like a family,” said fast bowler Ishant Sharma on Saturday. “Even when we lose, or when someone does badly, we don’t point fingers at each other. There is no sense of insecurity among the players, and no one plays for himself but for the team,” he added.

For example, he said, Suresh Raina could have held on to the strike and completed a 50 in the fourth one-dayer, or Dhoni could have slowed down and reached his century. When asked about the mind-set, Dhoni said: “There was a ball change in the 34th over and we had to take the second powerplay as well, so one of the batsmen had to capitalise. As captain, I decided to take the initiative to go after the bowling, but I got out on 94.”

... contd.