Is the Virat Kohli-pack the best visiting Indian group?

Is the Virat Kohli-pack the best visiting Indian group?

Is the Virat Kohli bunch the best Indian touring side? ©AFP

"The undertaking of this group is to travel well, contend and win. In the event that you take a gander at the most recent three years, we have won nine matches abroad and three arrangement (two in Sri Lanka and one in West Indies), I can't perceive some other Indian group in the last 15-20 years that has had a similar run in such a brief timeframe, and you have had some incredible players playing in those arrangement" - These were the expressions of lead trainer Ravi Shastri after India lost the arrangement in England in 2018 after the fourth Test in Southampton. 

Dissimilar to the Indian groups of the past, Virat Kohli's side was at the highest point of the ICC rankings toward the beginning of the year (in 2018) preceding they were to visit outside Asia - having lost only two Tests in the previous three years. The group had the chance to carve their name in history as the best Indian group at any point had they proceeded with the fantasy run abroad - the litmus test for groups from the sub-mainland. With India finishing the present cycle after the visit to New Zealand, it's a decent time to break down and perceive how close, or far, was Shastri from reality. 

With the end goal of this article, India's abroad visits to South Africa, England, New Zealand, and Australia - condensed as SENA from this time forward - are clubbed together into different cycles, each ordinarily running for a long time - plus or minus a couple of months at either end. West Indies have been generally disappointing in the period since the 1990s and have been avoided for this examination. Two additional provisos to the investigation - the erratic Test in New Zealand in 1994 has been avoided, and India didn't visit New Zealand somewhere in the range of 2003 and 2008 - which makes the 2006-08 cycle containing just three visits.