the difficulty of bowling pace in india is over-stated. mcgrath, ntini, hoggard, anderson, sharma, jason gillespie, steyn, vaas, flintoff (erm, any other big name 00s fast bowlers?) all average better in india than their career averages and at a pretty decent strike rate.
there's a few that didn't, lee was a disaster (though people seem to forget lee was pretty under whelming for most of the middle years of his career now) akhtar and pollock weren't great, though hardly that bad, and recently morkel struggled. morkel's hardly the best bowler in the world though, is he?
but for the most part good bowlers that got a few tests their figured it out, this was also bowling to a line up of tendulkar, laxman, ganguly, dravid and sehwag so hardly light weights.
there are dull wickets and perhaps they are so dull they seem more pronounced, but bowling in india is largely about making sure you have spinners that can carry you through the heat and allow your quicks to rest, you're also going to get far more joy with spinners in the second innings so it makes sense to have two. the fact you need two spinners isn't because it's too difficult to take a wicket with quicks, it's because it's too difficult to bowl them for 50 overs over 5 days in the blaring heat.
Dhoni kept pushing for two even when he was clearly spent.Take a bow indeed!
