India v England: history says that tourists' second-Test triumph in Mumbai is their finest ever victory in India So the playing field was still not level when England won once in 1972-73, three times in 1976-77, and in the one-off Jubilee match of 1980. England's batsmen may have found turning pitches unfamiliar, especially when they were prepared with wire brushes, as in Calcutta on Tony Greig's tour. But India's batsmen had no experience of facing fast bowling - whether short-pitched or swing - except if they had previously toured overseas. Thus Bob Willis, John Lever and Ian Botham enjoyed field days in India. The helmet, like worldwide professionalism, did not arrive until the late Seventies; there was no limitation of two bouncers per over. It was back to the Raj and the Good Old Days. Only four of England's victories in India have therefore come when both sides have been equally matched and fully professional. And in two of them England owed something not just to their own efforts but to rather strange goings-on within the Indian team. In 1984-85, as now, England's spinners were every bit as good as India's, in this case Phil Edmonds and Pat Pocock. But the pressure they exerted in Delhi does not entirely account for Kapil Dev having a slog on the last afternoon. There were rumours of tension between Kapil, the ex-captain, and Gavaskar, who had replaced him. Kapil was dropped for the next match, and not on playing grounds. In 2006 in Mumbai, India sent England in to bat: strange. England totalled 400 but even then Ajay Jadeja, the former Indian player who had been banned for match-fixing, kept saying on television that only two results were possible, a draw or a win for India: strange. Then on the last afternoon several home players decided the best way to play for a draw was to see how high into the air they could slog the off-breaks of Shaun Udal. So England's two most meritorious wins in India have been the most recent and the one at Madras in 1984-85, when Neil Foster took 11 wickets with his lively outswing, and both Graeme Fowler and Mike Gatting made double centuries in sapping heat. But this most recent has to be the best of all. You could see what it meant to the England players as Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann took wicket after wicket in India's second innings: Virender Sehwag for nine, Sachin Tendulkar for eight, Virat Kohli for seven, all groping as blindly as England's batsmen - bar Alastair Cook and Matt Prior - had in Ahmedabad. Never have you seen such animation from this generation of England cricketers as they appealed for catches and lbws then celebrated wildly: Panesar was by no means the most excited when he charged down the pitch waving his arms. They knew what they were doing: beating India at their own spinning game, in their home of cricket, and achieving a result that will be remembered through the ages.