Will India soon become the new Australia? I refer to being the team that everybody else loves to hate. Australia are in no immediate danger of relinquishing that title but if India, under Virat Kohli, continue in their current trajectory, they will soon share the dubious honour of being the most disliked team in world cricket. The team that all the neutrals will death ride.

I have just returned from South Africa where despite their obvious distaste for Australia being all-too-predictable, it was the general antipathy towards India that surprised me. I watched the gripping end to the Adelaide Test in a room full of South Africans and I was astonished by the 50/50 split in loyalties. There was a general consensus of opinion that we were about to enter a period of Indian dominance that would be marked by the same graceless triumphalism that symbolised the Australian reign. The celebrations when Ashwin took that final wicket merely confirmed their suspicions that much like Zimbabwe, freed from the tyranny of the Mugabe regime, the cricket world was about to inherit a new ruler who might go on to be equally despised.