“Welcome to my world,” said Michael Atherton drolly, as news spread fast of some Bangalorian madness. Rambo Raja, sat next to Atherton in a commentary box at Multan, didn’t even bother concealing his glee. The world was catching up with the fact that India, having won the toss and chosen to bat in their series opener against New Zealand, had just been skittled for 46 – the same score that Atherton’s England had coughed up at Trinidad 30 years ago.

Hastily, for the record: I really like India’s Test team. It’s nobly led by my favourite player, Rohit Sharma, a genius and a nice guy whose old-world orthodoxy offers an exquisite counterpoint to the prevailing chaos. Its main spinner (Ashwin) is an all-timer with the intellect to go with it. In Jasprit Bumrah they’ve got a fast bowler worthy of discussion a hundred years from now. They’ve got the best young opener in the game with an irresistible origin story (Yashasvi Jaiswal), the death-defying folk hero Rishabh Pant, and Virat Kohli.

We are lucky to have them, and they don’t get the credit they deserve for being the hardest-working team in showbiz. Which is not to say that the schadenfreude doesn’t flow when they get turned over inside 31 overs on their own track against New Zealand.

Despite the inevitable fightback, India would lose by eight wickets on the final morning, their first home defeat to New Zealand since Richard Hadlee’s nine-for at Mumbai in 1988. And in a certain light, that will always be the narrative: India’s loss, not New Zealand’s gain. Perhaps this is inevitable, when a Kiwi victory, even one as remarkable as this, produces mere ripples of goodwill gently lapping around its feet.

Central to the win, rather beautifully, was a tousled offshoot of India’s obsession. In 1997 a software architect called Ravi Krishnamurty emigrated from Bangalore, where he’d been a good club cricketer, to settle his family in New Zealand. Two years later, his wife gave birth to a son, Rachin.

By the age of six, Rachin Ravindra was making waves in Wellington as a cricketer-prodigy of rare talent. By 16 he was playing in an Under-19 World Cup. By 23, he was making hundreds at senior level. And so it was that last month, the boy returned to his father’s home city as New Zealand’s Test-match No.4, freshly installed as their Gen-Z fulcrum across the formats.

Ravindra’s 134 at Bangalore may have only occupied 157 balls, but the knock carried far-reaching consequences. A second Test hundred on a juicy pitch, including a 137-run stand with his team’s No.9, may have underscored New Zealand’s dominance, taking them beyond even India’s capacity to fight back. But more than that, the innings nestled Ravindra right in the vanguard – alongside Jaiswal, Sri Lanka’s record-gobbling run machine Kamindu Mendis and Harry Brook (who also had a useful month) – of a game that waits for no one, carving out new icons as it goes. Note this, too: they are the four best young batters in the world, and they all bleed for Test cricket.

New Zealand’s Test win came early on Sunday, October 20. A few hours later, their women’s team completed the dream sequence.

No one gave them a chance. They had never won the T20 World Cup before. They came into the tournament on a run of 10 straight defeats – the longest dry spell in history for any team that went on to a win a world title. But on day one of their campaign they turned over India by 58 runs, smashing 160, and never looked back.

Sophie Devine and Suzie Bates, the team’s thirtysomething survivors, are special cricketers, unfailingly committed and gracious in the face of frequent setbacks of funding, resources and broader structural support. This win, dominating the much-fancied South Africans in the final, was validation for them, for Amelia Kerr, the brilliant young all-rounder who took the Player of the Match award for her 43 and 3-24, and for the Kiwi way of doing things.

After the match, the squad and backroom staff wandered out to the middle of the Dubai Cricket Stadium in their sliders and sat down in a circle. The place was deserted. The tournament had plodded along in the shadows after the original hosts, Bangladesh, were forced to give it up. Crowds had been sparse at times, atmospheres a little contrived, though the final itself was a buoyant occasion. Back in New Zealand meanwhile, it was about 5am on a Monday morning. Within an hour or two, its cricket-curious public would be waking up to check their phones to see a little history, and to go about their days with a spring in their step. Just as it should be.

“The great thing about being a Kiwi is we all get in behind each other,” said Devine, the morning after the night before. “It doesn’t matter what sport you play. It just shows you how connected New Zealand is.”

The month of October 2024 belonged to New Zealand cricket. Long may they reign.

This article is taken from issue 82 of Wisden Cricket Monthly, available to pre-order now.