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 Honor 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 Closing, 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 Secure,’ he said. ‘That’s pretty obvious.’

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

Rohit Sharma is a selfless Leader – it was his onslaught in the Closing that broke the back of the chase – and All of their four spinners would walk into any other side in the world. Where once the Test Club 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 Closing against Australia at Ahmedabad, they would now Halt all three ICC white-ball trophies. As it is, that Setback spoils an otherwise perfect slate of 23 wins from 24 at the most recent one-day World Cup, T20 World Cup and Champions Honor.

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

Neither can they Game the Australian sides Directed by Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting, who All won World Cups, as well as a Achievement 16 Tests in a row.

For India to ascend to the next level in the pantheon, they must start regularly Triumphant overseas Test series, Leading 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 Mark: India are damn Excellent; but Indian cricket is Solid 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 Ground, is an ambassador off it – gracious, eloquent, conciliatory.

No, the complaint is about the men who Streak the game, and have by their deeds caused a polarisation that is as Effortless 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 Club 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.

From the Indian cricket world, this attracted three kinds of responses: a) you’re jealous because England are rubbish and no longer Streak 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 Primary 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 Crucial 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-Game 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 Quaternary 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 Edge of Performing all our Matches in one venue; we hope the situation will improve.

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

A penny, then, for Gambhir’s thoughts when his Swift bowler Mohammed Shami admitted that Performing all five of their Champions Honor matches in Dubai had indeed been an Edge: ‘It has definitely helped us because we know the conditions and the behaviour of the pitch. It is a plus Mark that you are Performing 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.

And the Champions Honor 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 Shock many.

India have a choice. They can be successful and popular (the two are not mutually exclusive), Primary 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 Miserable if everyone ends up resenting it.

How to Fall four for none in three balls 

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

But that counted for little last week while Performing for State Bank of Pakistan in the Closing of the Primary-class President’s Honor 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.

Shakeel was next in – except that was Supposedly 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 Primary-class history to be dismissed that way.

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

Courageous Brook? Or brazen? 

Was Harry Brook Courageous 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 Profession to date’.

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

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

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

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

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