Given the customary plentitude of attributable characters around big time success and a tireless social media’s unerring eye for the easiest person to peg a story on, it was perhaps inevitable that India’s Test series triumph down under would come in due course to be embellished with its Sourav Ganguly angle.

We knew little about how the currently ailing president of the Board of Control for Cricket India was doing, presumably at home, when YouTube came up with a video, narrating how Ganguly had called up stand-in captain Ajinkya Rahane after the Adelaide disaster, urging calmness and confidence in both self and team so things could be turned around.

The-rest-is-history note that ended the presentation, somewhat heavy with its verbosity, was not really over-emphasised, which was just as well, leaving it to the viewer to conclude that they also served who only saw and advised picking up the pieces.

It, of course, goes without saying that India’s eventual victory in the see-saw contest would never have been possible if Rahane himself did not believe it possible. And all that has so far been said ~ by standees as well as grandees – about how he resurrected the team that had lost the first Test slumping to their lowest innings score and never fuelled any waffling about regular skipper Virat Kohli’s absence is quite correct in its entirety.

So you do not really try and pick a hole when illustrious elder statesmen of cricket ~ Sunil Gavaskar, for one – assert that credit should be given where it is due and point at Rahane. Well might many people have admired him the more for the firmness, tempered by understated self-respect, with which Rahane dealt with the situation that arose as racial abuse from fans directed at India caused screaming headlines. He did not lay it on with a trowel despite a very strong provocation where others might not have been so restrained. The game, after all, is what matters most. And that is why it is important to take a fresh look at the resources Rahane had at his disposal as the fourth Test was gone into.

India’s is a magic victory because unlikely neophytes pulled it off. In Pakistan, seasoned campaigners of yesteryear have chosen to specify Rahul Dravid as the man who has made it possible even without being anywhere around the squad in any capacity whatsoever.

The former national captain’s patient, away-from-the-limelight and strenuous labours with a remarkably large array of aspirants over the past few years in and out of the national academy have been cited as the reason why India’s second string appeared just as primed as any other lot anywhere when they missed so many of their first choice but injured players.

Virtually each of the new ones is said to have had the benefit of training at some time under the erstwhile Karnataka stalwart. He enjoys his job. To each his own.