Kolkata, Aug. 7 -- In January, an India team with a multi-star cast lost the Test series in Australia 1-3 with skipper Rohit Sharma missing the first Test and sitting out of the last, Ravichandran Ashwin shocking the world by retiring midway, Jasprit Bumrah breaking down in the final game and Virat Kohli going off the boil after starting with a hundred in Perth. Seven months on, India have squared a series in England without Kohli, Sharma and Ashwin, the two wins coming in Tests not featuring Bumrah, one of them without Rishabh Pant as well, and amid a lot of criticism over a cautious selection strategy that denied Kuldeep Yadav a game. It was also a sensational coming of age for Shubman Gill, breaking Sunil Gavaskar's record of most runs by an Indian captain in a Test series. Most balls faced, most hundreds in the series and a stupendous average of 75.4, Gill was everything India wanted from their new captain. The other batting successes have been equally comforting. In Washington Sundar, India have found an allrounder willing to graft for valuable partnerships when not drawing batters out of their crease with loopy off-breaks. And once again, Ravindra Jadeja proved his worth with five fifties and a resilient, unbeaten hundred that allowed India to draw the Manchester Test. At the top, India have surely forged an all-weather opening combination with Yashasvi Jaiswal as the aggressor and KL Rahul as the anchor. Between them, they got four hundreds, four fifties and faced 1,664 balls across the five Tests. In the middle, Pant was as usual at his belligerent best. On the bowling front, India can finally breathe easy now that Mohammed Siraj has established himself as the go-to man for breaking partnerships or just putting in long spells. The biggest takeaway? The belief that no adversity can be daunting enough for this team. If India's rearguard batting at Old Trafford was admirable, their bowling fightback at The Oval with just 35 runs in the bank was breathtaking. "This morning kind of summarised what this team is all about," Gill said after the match on Monday. "70-odd runs, seven wickets in hand. The way Brook and Root were going, not many teams in the world would have given themselves a chance. But this team believes that whenever we have some kind of an opening, we can make that, we can get through that opening." That said, India still have a few issues to sort out. There is indecision over the No.3 spot with both Karun Nair and Sai Sudharsan putting in some good work. Nair's technique came to India's rescue in the form of a gritty fifty at The Oval, but if India are to build this team for the future, they have to think more long-term with Sudarshan, 23, who is a decade younger than Nair. This was his first series however, so there is time for Gill to learn and improve. Gill will be his own man but if there is one thing to be inherited from his predecessor, it's Kohli's uncompromising stand on picking five specialist bowlers in overseas Tests. Which brings us to the elephant in the room - the strategy behind India's bowling attack selection. Be it in Australia or England, India leaned towards picking a batting-heavy eleven at the cost of a specialist bowler. It didn't work in Australia. It partly worked in England. Nitish Reddy and Shardul Thakur didn't exactly ace the seaming allrounder's job. It meant India's fast bowlers were stretched in England on flat pitches. It was a miracle that Siraj got through all five Tests unscathed but worrying was how the comparatively untested and better rested Akash Deep was prone to breakdowns. Trying Anshul Kamboj at Manchester was a punt that went horribly wrong, but more deflating was the pace with which he bowled as the third pacer, who shared the new ball with Bumrah. The bigger reason why Jadeja and Washington were picked together was the solidity they gave to the batting. And while India may have passed this transition test by the barest of margins, they might want to have a relook at the strategy behind benching their best spinner on some tracks that could have easily been passed off as Indian....