India climb to No. 2 in ICC Test rankings

True about Elgar and van Zyl, but du Plessis not so much. He's now played 26 tests, 10 of which were in Asia. Sadly his stats show that he hasn't done well there apart from the two tests he played in Sri Lanka and his one and only innings in the washed out tour of Bangladesh. His form of late hasn't been good though, regardless of where he plays and there must be some doubt about his selection against England. The same can be said for a few of the other batsmen though as the only one who acquitted himself reasonably well was AB de Villiers.

It was good to see some fighting spirit from Temba Bavuma in the last test though. I'm not sure he'll continue to open the batting, but he should retain his place in the team.

To my mind one of the selectors' big mistakes was sending Quinton de Kock home for the test series. He did pretty well in the ODI series and one of the recent unofficial tests against India A in India, and has a lot more international experience than Dane Vilas, who seemed to be totally out of his depth most of the time.

And that's the light at the end of the tunnel I was talking about. Consistency is the key now with the test match team, as I think we all know that in recent years it's been a bit hit or miss to say the least.

The overhaul of the shorter formats of the game needed doing a while ago, and I'm just glad they've finally made that move.

Windies will be climbing