Dear India cricket fans – we think your team could be the best of all time …but here are the very good reasons why they’re also the most unpopular, writes LAWRENCE BOOTH

As India’s players were handed the Champions Trophy by India’s ICC chairman at India’s new home-away-from-home in front of India’s fans, it seemed perverse to wonder whether cricket has ever been more polarised.

Before the final, commentator Ian Smith – refreshingly frank, as ever – had summed it up. ‘I think everyone around the world apart from Indian cricket fans wants New Zealand to win,’ he said. ‘That’s pretty obvious.’

India, let it be said, were comfortably the best team throughout the tournament. Forget Dubai: they would have won had they played all their games on the moon.

Rohit Sharma is a selfless captain – it was his onslaught in the final that broke the back of the chase – and each of their four spinners would walk into any other side in the world. Where once the Test team had Bedi, Prasanna, Venkat and Chandrasekhar, their white-ball side now boasts Kuldeep, Jadeja, Axar and Chakravarthy.

Soberingly for their opponents, India won without Jasprit Bumrah, world cricket’s MVP, and had no need either for Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rishabh Pant or Yuzvendra Chahal. Suryakumar Yadav, the star of T20 cricket, can’t make the 50-over side; ahead of him in the T20 rankings are Abhishek Sharma and Tilak Varma. The talent is broad, deep and awe-inspiring.

Had India not lost their nerve in the 2023 World Cup final against Australia at Ahmedabad, they would now hold all three ICC white-ball trophies. As it is, that defeat spoils an otherwise perfect slate of 23 wins from 24 at the most recent one-day World Cup, T20 World Cup and Champions Trophy.

India, let it be said, were comfortably the best team throughout the tournament. Forget Dubai: they would have won had they played all their games on the moon

As India ’s players were handed the Champions Trophy, it seemed perverse to wonder whether cricket has ever been more polarised

India were handed their medals by the Indian head of the ICC, Jay Shah

Partly for that reason, this India team are not yet in the same all-round category as the West Indians who won the first two World Cups in 1975 and 1979, then blew away Test opponents between 1980 and the mid-1990s.

Neither can they match the Australian sides led by Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting, who each won World Cups, as well as a record 16 Tests in a row.

For India to ascend to the next level in the pantheon, they must start regularly winning overseas Test series, starting in England this summer. As it is, they have lost six of their last eight Tests, home and away. They are not there – yet.

But if and when they translate their vast talent pool into Test dominance, and not just on turning pitches at home, they will make a case to join West Indies and Australia. God help the rest of the world, because the gap may never close.

And yet. The morning after the coronation before, I received messages from friends and colleagues in the West Indies, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, England, New Zealand and Australia, all making a similar point: India are damn good; but Indian cricket is hard to like.

This is a not a dig at the players, who seem like decent, humble guys. Even Virat Kohli, who has been known to make a fool of himself on the field, is an ambassador off it – gracious, eloquent, conciliatory.

No, the complaint is about the men who run the game, and have by their deeds caused a polarisation that is as simple as it is stark: India on the one hand, everyone else on the other. If the divergence continues, their cricketers will end up becoming the most successful, least-liked team in cricket history. They deserve better.

Last week’s column outlined the ways in which the game’s power structure has become so skewed in India’s favour that tournaments now cater for their preferences.

Australia’s teams under Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh dominated in all formats

India’s defeat in the 2023 World Cup final on home soil ruined their perfect run of dominance

From the Indian cricket world, this attracted three kinds of responses: a) you’re jealous because England are rubbish and no longer run the game; b) we make all the money so we can do what we want; c) our hands are tied because the Indian government won’t allow us to visit Pakistan.

The first two – essentially ‘cry more’ and ‘might is right’ – have become depressing clarion calls for India’s vast and often unpleasant army of keyboard warriors. The third is more complex, but ignores an important reality: it suits the deeply politicised Indian board to keep Pakistan at arm’s length.

Even if we accept the argument that it really is unsafe for Indian sportsmen to visit Pakistan, where they would receive presidential levels of security, what possible justification is there for the ongoing ban on Pakistani participation at the IPL?

After all, since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, Pakistan have visited India for two 50-over World Cups, a T20 World Cup and a five-match white-ball tour in 2012-13 – all without incident. Yet, cruelly, their players remain unwelcome at the greatest cricketing show on earth. India’s ostracisation of their neighbours has a whiff of expediency.

Yet a fourth response was all but absent. This required India and its fans to offer some give and take: we accept things aren’t ideal, and we’re sorry we’ve had the advantage of playing all our games in one venue; we hope the situation will improve.

There was little of this, with India’s coach Gautam Gambhir telling the ‘perpetual cribbers’ they should ‘grow up’.

A penny, then, for Gambhir’s thoughts when his fast bowler Mohammed Shami admitted that playing all five of their Champions Trophy matches in Dubai had indeed been an advantage: ‘It has definitely helped us because we know the conditions and the behaviour of the pitch. It is a plus point that you are playing all the matches at one venue.’

Hiding behind political machinations is one thing. To refuse to engage with the idea that the cards keep falling in your favour is another level of disingenuousness. And that is what irritates the rest of the world.

It’s unacceptable that Pakistani players remain blocked from the Indian Premier League

India seamer Mohammed Shami (right) even admitted that the lack of travel during the Champions Trophy had helped India

And the Champions Trophy has taken the irritation to a new level. Until now, the various advantages India have accrued at global events have been shrugged off as the price a sport must pay for mollifying its major benefactor. But the ruthless sidelining of hosts Pakistan has upset many.

India have a choice. They can be successful and popular (the two are not mutually exclusive), first courting then commanding global affection. Or they can flaunt their power like some overdue perk, a counterweight to earlier bullying by England and Australia.

Indian cricket is one of the wonders of the modern world. How sad if everyone ends up resenting it.

How to lose four for none in three balls 

There’s falling asleep on the job – and there’s Saud Shakeel, the under-rated Pakistan batsman with the Test average of 50.

But that counted for little last week while playing for State Bank of Pakistan in the final of the first-class President’s Trophy against Pakistan Television – a game played in the evening because of Ramadan.

State Bank of Pakistan were going along nicely at 128 for one when Mohammed Shehzad removed Umar Amin and Fawad Alam in successive balls.

Saud Shakeel put England to the sword last October – but was decidedly less lively last week

Shakeel was next in – except that was reportedly enjoying 40 winks. And when he dragged himself out to the middle, Pakistan Television appealed for timed out. It was upheld, making Shakeel the seventh player in first-class history to be dismissed that way.

And when Shehzad bowled Irfan Khan first ball, State Bank had lost four for none in three deliveries – possibly the most hapless collapse in the history of first-class cricket.

Brave Brook? Or brazen? 

Was Harry Brook brave or foolish to withdraw from his £590,000 IPL deal with Delhi Capitals?

On the one hand, he is giving himself the break he says he needs ‘after the busiest period in my career to date’.

Will Harry Brook come to regret giving up his IPL deal in favour of playing for England?

This makes sense, especially if he’s involved in England’s white-ball captaincy shake-up following the resignation of Jos Buttler.

On the other, this is the second year in a row he has been a late dropout, and he now risks a two-year IPL ban, which would cost him the chance of getting used to Indian conditions and high-pressure situations. With some trepidation, we wish him the best.

The Champions League is back! (But not for the Blast)

Inside Cricket understands that the next step in global cricket’s inevitable T20ification will be a Champions League involving the best side(s) from each country’s franchise tournament.

And, in the UK, that means the Hundred rather than the T20 Blast. It may take time, and space will need to be found in the calendar. But watch this space.

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