A perfect Test series

India concluded a near perfect Test series against England. Just about the only desirable thing missing was a few umpiring howlers going against the Indians, howlers that would have been obvious on TV, and could have been overturned by the use of DRS, but would not have been because India's cricket establishment is the only one enlightened enough to know that DRS is bullshit.

Other than that everything else was just about perfect. Sample this:

• Someone needed to tell the selectors how incredibly stupid it was to pick Gautam Gambhir and Stuart Binny for this tour. The series could not have provided a clearer message. Gambhir's pedigree (or lack thereof) as a Test batsman in seamer friendly conditions is well known, but he was selected on the strength of a few decent, but less than stellar domestic performances. His dismissals in the final Test have (hopefully) provided enough embarrassment to his supporters in the cricket establishment to leave him alone now. Poor Binny was picked on the basis of one outlandish bowling spell in a ODI in seamer friendly conditions against the might of the Bangladeshi batting line up! Talk about dumb decisions.

• I couldn't have scripted a better way to expose the folly of playing Ravindra Jadeja as our only spinner and number 7 batsman in these conditions. It was unfortunate that he scored a highly unlikely 68 at Lords that helped us win, but everything was back to normal in the next two Test matches, and the batting exploits of Bhuvaneshwar and Ashwin further exposed the limitations of Jadeja as a lower order batsman.

• Before the last Test match Dhoni made a very insightful statement - "Process is more important that the result. We have to make sure we do not repeat the mistakes of the last Test". Lo and behold, Dhoni's team followed the same process, and achieved the same result, which didn't matter of course. As long as you follow the same process, it doesn't matter if you get bundled out for 148 and 94 while your opposition clobbers you for 486 in their only innings. It was heartening to see the captain of the Indian team make such an important statement and live by it - so what if the rest of the world thought it was not a very smart thing to say?

• Confidence and humility are strange bedfellows, but they are both important for success in sports, as long as they are deployed in the right proportion. Kohli had to understand that his precocious talent in the limited overs game did not guarantee him automatic success in Tests, and there could not have been a better lesson for him than an average of 13 over 5 Tests. Kohli is as mentally tough as they come, and he is sure to bounce back from his disastrous performance which will be good for India in the long term.

• The series has provided further evidence, if there was any required, that a serious rethink is needed on how the game should be run in the country to fundamentally change our ability to compete with the toughest teams in all conditions around the world. This is a tough one. I expect to see the familiar outrage but no tangible long term action. We will have to pray for several more debacles of this magnitude to take place, in order to see useful action on the ground.

• Finally it is clear that Dhoni has outlived his role as the Test leader. India's astonishing collapse and lack of spine will perhaps force some thinking on a change of leadership, which would not have happened with a 1-1, or even a 1-2 result.

All in all I am delighted with how this series went. You can't have everything, but if only the umpires had made some costly blunders negatively affecting the Indian team, I would have been in heaven...