Mumbai: The emergence of Ishant Sharma as the strike bowler and the resurgence of Zaheer Khan have given India’s bowling the edge and made the team potential world beaters, senior Test batsman V.V.S Laxman said.

Ishant took 15 wickets and his new-ball partner Zaheer took 11 on docile home pitches this month to record batting-heavy India’s first Test-series victory over top-ranked Australia in seven years.

“We’d never seen such kind of bowling on flat Indian pitches by Indian pacers. That was one of the reasons why the Australian batsmen were under tremendous pressure,” Laxman said.

“The two contributed to half of the dismissals. That’s been huge as we have always relied heavily on our spinners,” he said.

The 2-0 victory in the four-match series saw India move to second place in the official Test rankings. Thirteen points separate them from Australia.

Ishant was adjudged Player of the Series versus Australia but missed the first two one-dayers against England on Friday and Monday with an ankle injury.

India play two home Tests against the tourists next month.

The seasoned Zaheer and the 20-year-old Ishant struck early blows and then troubled Australian batsmen by reverse swinging the old ball, backing mainline spinners Harbhajan Singh, Amit Mishra and Anil Kumble, who tallied 32 among them.

“We’ve never bowled so well in tandem. The pressure was there from both pacers and spinners.

“This was the first time I saw, and the team saw, that we can put the opposition under pressure by slowing down their scoring rate,” he said.

(Reuters)